A terrible movie with a very important message

Rating: 6/10 (24 January 2008)

I was not impressed with I Am Legend  but I encourage you to see it anyway. The message around which the action is built is very important.
I'm very concerned about the direction that medicine has taken over the years. The emphasis today is on masking symptoms instead of curing disease. In some cases during the past couple of decades, scientific advancement has taken a turn to the dark side. Basically, science is neither good nor bad, but the misuse of scientific principles can be deadly. Watch I Am Legend and get a glimpse of what can happen if we play God in our laboratories.
I viewed I Am Legend at the local IMAX. Although no movie experience even comes close to that provided by the IMAX, it didn't help this film. Will Smith is an actor's actor. There's no doubt that his craft made I Am Legend a more positive experience  and I can't forget to mention the dog, Samantha. I was stunned by her acting (probably a combination of offscreen commands and editing but still really amazing). Despite those positive points, I Am Legend is a terrible movie; a predictable storyline with a lone hero standing against certain self-destruction to accomplish the greater good: save all of humankind.
I Am Legend opens with a newscast. A female physician is being interviewed about her discovery: a modified measles virus vaccine that cured the various cancers of all patients who received it. The actress playing the doctor did a remarkable job of portraying the elite smugness of someone who is sure that she has just saved the world; she oozes false modesty. In her short time on screen, she presents all the traits that are dominant in today's medical culture: aloofness, superiority, postured omnipotence, obvious disdain for people whose views don't conform to the standard medical platform, supreme confidence in "science" per se, and tunnel vision. Physicians who fit that profile seem not to care about alternative therapies. Actually, they care too much. They care that people don't want to use their drugs, their surgeries, their radiation treatments, or their modified virus strains. They care that increasing numbers of people reject their "cures" in favor of better prevention against disease: improved nutrition, sufficient exercise, taking supplements, and seeking out health practitioners whose therapeutic goal is not just the masking of symptoms.
However, I Am Legend makes one point very clearly: "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!" It's part of human nature to presume that we can fix things and change the universe for the better. But how often does our interference cause irreparable damage? We have to be very careful about how we tinker with the natural gifts that we've been given. Playing God is dangerous and usually backfires. I Am Legend takes that warning to a new level by showing us how a manmade virus has the potential to destroy all human life. Of course it's all fiction, but underneath the storyline is the glaring truth that it probably wouldn't take much of a change to destroy all of us. In this movie, that small change is a practically invisible virus, not a massive nuclear detonation.
If you can see I Am Legend at an IMAX, great; it's a sensory experience that you won't soon forget. Don't be disappointed that this movie doesn't really live up to its hype (or its opening weekend box office sales). Will Smith is a wonderful actor, but he can't save a film that is short on meaningful dialogue and long on trumped-up graphics. It's the take-home message that makes this movie well worth seeing.