When you've seen as many movies as I have, you eventually start to feel like you've seen it all. That's why the opening moments of
I Am Legend are so thrilling. The movie so realistically creates a post-apocalyptic New York City that you just have to sit back and marvel at it. I don't know how they did it, and quite frankly, I don't want the illusion shattered. Having just returned from New York myself, the sights the movie creates of the city abandoned were all the more chilling and effective. Perhaps the special effects and sets used to create the illusion of one of the most populated cities in the U.S. being a ghost town are too good, because when the movie starts relying on more conventional special effects, I was let down.
That's not to say this is a bad movie. In fact, for the first hour or so,
I Am Legend is a great movie. Director Francis Lawrence (
Constantine), along with screenwriters Mark Protosevich (
Poseidon) and Akiva Goldsman (
The Da Vinci Code) do such a great job during these moments detailing how a man would live on his own in an abandoned post-apocalyptic metropolis. These scenes are so engaging, thrilling, and fascinating that I couldn't help but be a little disheartened when the movie started to rely on cheap monster movie theatrics. While the movie remains enjoyable throughout, the first and second halves of the film are almost like watching two completely different films. The first and far more effective half is a thrilling tale of survival, while the second is your genuine Hollywood thriller blockbuster that is not without its moments, but just can't quite live up to the first. After you've seen the wonders of something new, the standard computer generated monsters leaping out at the main character from the shadows just doesn't seem to cut it anymore.
The story kicks off in 2012, where a former military scientist named Robert Neville (Will Smith) wanders the abandoned streets of New York City alone with his dog, Sam. Through flashbacks, we learn that a virus spread throughout the world, wiping out a good part of the human population, and turning a majority of them into demonic zombie-like ghouls referred to as Night Stalkers, since they can only venture about and feed in the dark. Robert is one of the very few who was immune, and has devoted his life to trying to discover a cure in the remains of his lab, and sending out radio frequencies, hoping to find other survivors like him. Robert does his best to survive day-by-day. He hunts for food, trying to track down the various wild animals that now populate the streets of New York, and he tries to lead as normal of a life he can when he's at home. Even so, the memories of the night New York was evacuated still haunt him, and he has begun to lose hope that anyone but him is out there. With the Night Stalkers apparently becoming more intelligent and more aggressive with each passing night, and a hope for a cure to the virus constantly out of his reach, it might not be long before he himself no longer exists.
One of the more difficult challenges for any actor is to literally carry an entire movie by themselves. It's something that's not really been attempted in a big budget studio film since Tom Hanks in
Cast Away. With
I Am Legend, Will Smith proves that he is not only up to the challenge, but that he has matured quite a bit as an actor since the days that he was mainly known for summer blockbusters like
Men in Black and
Independence Day. The days of the cool and cocky "Big Will" are behind us, and we now have an actor who is much more sympathetic and human. His Robert Neville is a man who tries his hardest to keep hope alive, even though the harsh reality is constantly staring him in the face. He tries his best to lead a normal life. He talks to his dog as if it were his best friend, and he's set up mannequins at some of the nearby abandoned stores he frequents for something that resembles a human for him to talk to. He's not crazy or delusional, he's just trying desperately to cling to anything that resembles personal contact. Smith does a great job at convincing us he is a man who is grasping at the last bit of his humanity, and perhaps sanity.
It is during these moments when the film is dealing with Robert and his life in this nightmare he has found himself in that
I Am Legend is nearly pitch perfect. The movie is almost like a bizarre documentary, as we watch the everyday life of the "last man on Earth". How would he find food? How would he entertain himself? What would be his daily routine? The movie finds some interesting answers to these questions, and it creates some memorable images, such as when Robert is hunting wild game through the abandoned streets of Times Square, or when he is playing golf off the deck of a military battleship. He keeps his spirits up with old movies and classic music, particularly Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds", which is put to great use in the film's soundtrack. He pretends things are still the same when he's at home by watching old tapes of morning news programs while eating breakfast. We are drawn into the character and his life to the point that we start looking forward to the next scene, learning what we will discover or learn next. It's a wonderful thing when a movie fascinates you with its very ideas, and even better, acts upon that potential. For the first hour or so of the film, which is devoted almost entirely to Robert and his dog trying to survive,
I Am Legend is a gripping and fascinating experience. I was loving each passing minute, and grew increasingly excited about what I was seeing.
Then those pesky Night Stalkers have to show up and turn the movie into something far more conventional. It's hard not to venture into spoiler territory here, but if you were to walk out of the theater at the moment when Robert begins to lose all hope, you could easily be convinced you had seen a great movie. Dare to stick around, and that great movie downgrades itself to simply a good movie right before your eyes. You can almost pinpoint the exact moment
I Am Legend goes on autopilot, and it's right about the moment he runs over a group of the creatures with his car. The fascinating story of a man trying to survive in an abandoned world is abandoned, and we're left with a sci-fi thriller occupied mainly by CG monsters that look like they'd be more comfortable being gunned down in a video game than in a big budget movie. While there are undoubtedly some tense moments, and the sequences have been made with care, they do not hold the intelligence or wonder of the earlier half of the film. And besides, we've seen it all before. Here is a movie that devotes its first hour to things we haven't seen, then decides to just forget everything, and fall back on "monsters lurking in the dark before they jump at the camera" cliches. It's almost as if the screenwriters lost interest in the project half-way through. Like they just didn't want to think anymore, so they just threw the second half together. It's a crime for a movie to spark our interest so long, then betray it by not living up to it. Great movies need a great finish, and this movies final 40 minutes or so seem slapped together.
Now, I don't want to get the wrong point across. I am recommending
I Am Legend, because I think it is effective for a large majority of the film. I just grew upset when the movie started to short change itself. Instead of the fascinating and intriguing film we were watching, we get the usual dumbed down shoot outs, car chases, and things jumping out at us while loud noises bang on the soundtrack. The first half of the movie has these moments, but when they started to dominate the entire later half of the film, I couldn't help but feel disappointed. If Protosevich and Goldsman had found a way to end their movie as intelligently as it began, we'd probably be looking at one of the great films of 2007. As it is, it will just have to settle for an "honorable mention" when I look back at the films I enjoyed this year.
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When you've seen as many movies as I have, you eventually start to feel like you've seen it all. That's why the opening moments of I Am Legend are so thrilling. The movie so realistically creates a post-apocalyptic New York City that you just have to sit back and marvel at it. I don't know how they did it, and quite frankly, I don't want the illusion shattered. Having just returned from New York myself, the sights the movie creates of the city abandoned were all the more chilling and effective. Perhaps the special effects and sets used to create the illusion of one of the most populated cities in the U.S. being a ghost town are too good, because when the movie starts relying on more conventional special effects, I was let down.
That's not to say this is a bad movie. In fact, for the first hour or so, I Am Legend is a great movie. Director Francis Lawrence (Constantine), along with screenwriters Mark Protosevich (Poseidon) and Akiva Goldsman (The Da Vinci Code) do such a great job during these moments detailing how a man would live on his own in an abandoned post-apocalyptic metropolis. These scenes are so engaging, thrilling, and fascinating that I couldn't help but be a little disheartened when the movie started to rely on cheap monster movie theatrics. While the movie remains enjoyable throughout, the first and second halves of the film are almost like watching two completely different films. The first and far more effective half is a thrilling tale of survival, while the second is your genuine Hollywood thriller blockbuster that is not without its moments, but just can't quite live up to the first. After you've seen the wonders of something new, the standard computer generated monsters leaping out at the main character from the shadows just doesn't seem to cut it anymore.
The story kicks off in 2012, where a former military scientist named Robert Neville (Will Smith) wanders the abandoned streets of New York City alone with his dog, Sam. Through flashbacks, we learn that a virus spread throughout the world, wiping out a good part of the human population, and turning a majority of them into demonic zombie-like ghouls referred to as Night Stalkers, since they can only venture about and feed in the dark. Robert is one of the very few who was immune, and has devoted his life to trying to discover a cure in the remains of his lab, and sending out radio frequencies, hoping to find other survivors like him. Robert does his best to survive day-by-day. He hunts for food, trying to track down the various wild animals that now populate the streets of New York, and he tries to lead as normal of a life he can when he's at home. Even so, the memories of the night New York was evacuated still haunt him, and he has begun to lose hope that anyone but him is out there. With the Night Stalkers apparently becoming more intelligent and more aggressive with each passing night, and a hope for a cure to the virus constantly out of his reach, it might not be long before he himself no longer exists.
One of the more difficult challenges for any actor is to literally carry an entire movie by themselves. It's something that's not really been attempted in a big budget studio film since Tom Hanks in Cast Away. With I Am Legend, Will Smith proves that he is not only up to the challenge, but that he has matured quite a bit as an actor since the days that he was mainly known for summer blockbusters like Men in Black and Independence Day. The days of the cool and cocky "Big Will" are behind us, and we now have an actor who is much more sympathetic and human. His Robert Neville is a man who tries his hardest to keep hope alive, even though the harsh reality is constantly staring him in the face. He tries his best to lead a normal life. He talks to his dog as if it were his best friend, and he's set up mannequins at some of the nearby abandoned stores he frequents for something that resembles a human for him to talk to. He's not crazy or delusional, he's just trying desperately to cling to anything that resembles personal contact. Smith does a great job at convincing us he is a man who is grasping at the last bit of his humanity, and perhaps sanity.
It is during these moments when the film is dealing with Robert and his life in this nightmare he has found himself in that I Am Legend is nearly pitch perfect. The movie is almost like a bizarre documentary, as we watch the everyday life of the "last man on Earth". How would he find food? How would he entertain himself? What would be his daily routine? The movie finds some interesting answers to these questions, and it creates some memorable images, such as when Robert is hunting wild game through the abandoned streets of Times Square, or when he is playing golf off the deck of a military battleship. He keeps his spirits up with old movies and classic music, particularly Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds", which is put to great use in the film's soundtrack. He pretends things are still the same when he's at home by watching old tapes of morning news programs while eating breakfast. We are drawn into the character and his life to the point that we start looking forward to the next scene, learning what we will discover or learn next. It's a wonderful thing when a movie fascinates you with its very ideas, and even better, acts upon that potential. For the first hour or so of the film, which is devoted almost entirely to Robert and his dog trying to survive, I Am Legend is a gripping and fascinating experience. I was loving each passing minute, and grew increasingly excited about what I was seeing.
Then those pesky Night Stalkers have to show up and turn the movie into something far more conventional. It's hard not to venture into spoiler territory here, but if you were to walk out of the theater at the moment when Robert begins to lose all hope, you could easily be convinced you had seen a great movie. Dare to stick around, and that great movie downgrades itself to simply a good movie right before your eyes. You can almost pinpoint the exact moment I Am Legend goes on autopilot, and it's right about the moment he runs over a group of the creatures with his car. The fascinating story of a man trying to survive in an abandoned world is abandoned, and we're left with a sci-fi thriller occupied mainly by CG monsters that look like they'd be more comfortable being gunned down in a video game than in a big budget movie. While there are undoubtedly some tense moments, and the sequences have been made with care, they do not hold the intelligence or wonder of the earlier half of the film. And besides, we've seen it all before. Here is a movie that devotes its first hour to things we haven't seen, then decides to just forget everything, and fall back on "monsters lurking in the dark before they jump at the camera" cliches. It's almost as if the screenwriters lost interest in the project half-way through. Like they just didn't want to think anymore, so they just threw the second half together. It's a crime for a movie to spark our interest so long, then betray it by not living up to it. Great movies need a great finish, and this movies final 40 minutes or so seem slapped together.
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