I Am Legend

Another Will Smith film that gets to its halfway point and loses its promise, I Am Legend nevertheless is a fantastic piece of filmmaking, and a real presentation of Smith’s acting skills.

Scientist Robert Neville (Smith) lives a solitary existence in a deserted Manhattan; after a supposed cure for cancer begins to kill people worldwide, Neville becomes the last immune person left, and he thinks he is alone in the world. However, at night the people who neither died nor were immune to the disease hunt for blood – their bodies changed irrevocably, and their minds diminished to those of animals. Neville attempts to eke out an existence, but it’s becoming harder for him to cope with his solitude, and whilst he may not be the only person left, he has to continue his fight against the infected or face death at their hands.

Will Smith is everything with this movie – without his performance, it would crash and burn. Introducing other survivors only makes his performance better. Smith is the last man on earth, and as such, his performance is somewhat more difficult than usual. The actor is finally and consistently presenting himself (along with another two of his films ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ and ‘Seven Pounds’) as a mature and serious actor – he doesn’t wisecrack, there’s no rap track to accompany him. And Smith is a seriously good actor when he wants to be – his performance as Robert Neville is incredibly strong, the last man alive despondently going about survival, the city of New York his playground. Alice Braga plays another survivor, who, along with a small child she had found, tracks Neville down, and she does well with what she has as someone who is trying to reconnect – she is desperately searching for another human, and in Neville she finds one. The only real co-star other than the dog (who is great by the way) could be said to be Mike Patton of the band Faith No More, who voices the CGI humans, and it’s an achievement to be able to make such disturbing noises as he does. His vocal performance gives the otherwise soulless human infected with a sense of evil – an evil with its roots in humanity.

The film looks, sounds and is presented fantastically well by director Francis Lawrence, the particularly significant highlight being the empty New York in which the film takes place. Lawrence manages to craft a quite interesting update of the Richard Matheson novel here – his master-stroke is managing to convincingly empty New York City (more specifically Manhattan) and present it as a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Along with his direction of Smith’s total solitude and the visual effects on display, Lawrence has succeeded in making a particularly morose and dark blockbuster movie. What little dialogue is present is reflective of Neville’s solitude – memorable exchanges with his dog, the mannequins he strategically places to keep him sane and the eventual conversation with the two other survivors are great indicators of the psychological toll the events have taken on him. The music is mostly absent, only really appearing to accentuate the tension. And this is necessary – the deserted Manhattan is even more ominous when coupled with silence.

The practical and technological prowess exerted to make Manhattan appear so empty must be commended here – it really is incredibly convincing viewing the empty Times Square, or the many deserted streets of NYC that Neville traverses. The whole film is bathed in a dark golden light, and the resurgence of the wildlife amongst the skyscrapers presents the idea that nature is slowly claiming back what it used to cover. The only disappointment is the CGI used on the infected – if this had not been used then the film would most likely have been far more acclaimed, but as it is, the effects used are far too plastic, too fake to be taken seriously.

There are so many positives to this film, really. It’s a great movie that could have been perfect, and so nearly is. However, the CGI (and Lawrence’s adherence to it) ruins what may well have been the ultimate survivor movie.

7/10