I Am Legend tries hard, and succeeds initially, but its many changes in tone and method keep it from having any kind of lasting impact.
The human race has been dying left and right lately -- sometimes it's sad, sometimes it's frightening, and other times it's just plain weird. Viruses (28 Days Later), infertility (Children of Men), machines (The Matrix) -- what's next? Oh. Another virus.
Pervading the air of the silver screen in I Am Legend is a simultaneous sense of dread and apathy. In the minds of the filmmakers, dread should be felt by the audience, and apathy by Will Smith’s character, whose name is Robert Neville. It is a shame then, that while the evoked emotions are correct, their origins are reversed: that a viewer will feel uncaring toward the plight of Neville, whose sense of fear is underwhelming.
Opening the film is an interview, a news broadcast a la The Today Show (which is shown repeatedly throughout as hypothetical reruns) in which a doctor reveals a cure for cancer, brought about by the wonders of genetic engineering.
As the clash of metal sounds, the screen goes black, fading up on a New-Orleans-circa-August-2005 imitative shot of cars underwater but still on a freeway. It is three years later, and this is the new New York City: drowned, overgrown, wild, etc. It is a jungle. These shots are haunting, though fairly reminiscent of 2003’s 28 Days Later in which director Danny Boyle showed Cillian Murphy, fresh out of an oblivious coma, wondering around an abandoned London.
28 Days Later would subsequently roar into attack mode, unleashing the bloodthirsty scourge upon Murphy and his to-be-soon-found companions. That was an adrenaline picture, running like a menace through the English countryside in search of a safe place. I Am Legend, while featuring a similar premise, takes an alternate course, choosing the route of suspense.
A viewer learns in the passing minutes that the so-called “cure” for cancer went wrong, and fast. A virus, a plague resulted, people lost their hair, their pigmentation, their heart rates tripled, and they became for all intents and purposes cannibalistic zombies. More information is revealed through the flashbacks of Neville, who is presented as supposedly the only man alive on earth, due to his immunity from both the airborne and bite-transferred versions of the disease. A scientist, he was working on a cure before the official outbreak; he has continued this cause through the present, unsuccessful again and again.
About halfway through, the angle of examining the quiet desperation of Neville’s day-to-day life is given up in favor of pursuing – or perhaps explaining – the zombies. Or, rather, the zombies end up pursuing Neville.
Then the most bizarre thing happens about an hour in: it is learned that Neville’s radio-looped message attempting to contact anyone who might be alive and uninfected, telling them to meet him at a pier, was heard and answered. These additions to the cast are distractions; a film that started out existential should have remained existential: Neville should’ve just continued living in vain. But instead those watching will be treated to a quickie picker-upper inspirational ending, totally out of place and contrived (including a dull, pointless, and ultimately annoying voiceover finale).
The first hour of I Am Legend is good, solid entertainment, boasting good cinematography and, had it ended as well, an Oscar-caliber performance from Smith (perhaps the only actor who can carry a film solo). Ultimately, it’s just that Legend tries too hard to be too many things. As a film about loneliness, it has some merit – Smith entertains and wins sympathy for his dilemma. The general atmosphere is tense and tight, almost claustrophobic at times. But its about-face two-thirds of the way through is ridiculous and unnecessary, not to mention that the zombies don’t even look real but rather like the latest would-be incarnations in the next Resident Evil video game. Even so, this could still be all well and good, but for one major problem. Interestingly, even ironically, this problem might be described as genetic: zombie flicks just aren’t that interesting.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
