Two things are certain when it comes to futuristic Will Smith movies. One, they earn over a hundred mil. Two, everyone or everything wants a piece of the fresh prince, whether they be aliens or robots or, in this case, zombies with sensitive skin.
Will Smith plays soldier-slash-scientist Robert Neville in the loose movie adaptation of a Richard Matheson novel, which figures like a cross between the premise of Resident Evil, the car picking spree of Grand Theft Auto, and the weird-looking Persians from 300.
The year is 2012, and Robert is the only human resident of NYC after a viral outbreak solves global overpopulation problems (ironically, the virus starts as a promising cure for AIDS, proving that nothing good ever comes out of unprotected sex). On the other hand, the deer population is soaring, and so Robert starts his day by hunting (unsuccessfully) with his dog Samantha. Come sunset, it’s back to his home at 11 Washington Square, where he’s still bent on finding a cure for the Krippen Virus after a thousand and one days of solitude.
In between broadcasting to potential survivors and scavenging trips for CDs and canned food during the daytime, Robert tries to catch infected rodents and humans to test different potential cures on. The infected can’t stand the sun, so each day for Robert figures like From Dusk Till Dawn. His routine gets broken when Samantha gets bitten and infected, so he has to put her to sleep - and on his birthday to boot.
This pushes him over the edge, and in a suicidal rage he takes on the zombies at South Street Seaport, where he’s rescued by two other survivors who’ve never heard of Bob Marley. They take him back to his house at night, which is a no-no as the zombies retain their good tracking skills. Chased by a herd of dark seekers, Robert and the others head for the lab in the basement, where Robert discovers that his latest test subject looks cured. Seconds from being cornered, he gives some of the subject’s blood to the other survivors and lets them out a backdoor, then blows himself up with the dark seekers, earning him his legendary status with the survivors, who head to a survivor encampment in Vermont with the cure.
The combined dialogue for I Am Legend could fit in five pages, with most of the dialogue involving Smith talking to mannequins or dogs or sound recorders, but this lack of yakkity-yak-yak works to the movie’s benefit. In most movies a solo actor goes into a soliloquy to keep the chatter up, usually so the audience knows what he’s thinking. Here in I Am Legend, Smith doesn’t talk to himself, which makes things more realistic. Outside of flashbacks there’s no need to explain himself to the audience, because most camera shots are made behind or near Smith (one scene figures like a first-person shootout game) so we see what he sees. Plus, the movie is deliberately shot with a shaky camera, adding more reality to the movie’s feel (if people are still into I Am Legend for a couple more weeks, the upcoming movie Cloverfield might benefit due to its similar Blair Witch-ey film style).
Suffice to say, I Am Legend is unconventionally conventional, because it draws from a lot of all-too-familiar scripts but tells the story a bit more in-your-face. That’s enough for a 9 out of 10.
Some interesting side notes on I Am Legend: (1) It turns out that the Batman/Superman movie does get made in the future. (2) They say Katie Couric’s been a ratings nightmare, but apparently she’s the reporter of choice for the lone survivor. (3) the Yanks make jokes about Jersey and its industrial zones all the time on talk shows, but apparently NJ is the healthier place to be in 3 years.
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