Better than expected

Rating: 7/10 (25 December 2007)

saw this movie last night on Christmas Eve. The cineplex had a typical holiday eve crowd and my wife and I were there to see a typical holiday season movie - big bankable star, trailers that seemed to indicate standard low brow science fiction-ish stuff: Big Budget effects, Will Smith showing off his buff body, totting gun, shooting at ghoulish looking creatures, crashes, screams, the works. Boy, was I mistaken.
I am Legend is a rollicking ride, but not the one you would expect. Robert Neville (Will Smith) is a survivor from a cancer vaccine gone bad that has infected the world and may just be the the last surviving human on earth. The rest of humanity is either dead or transformed by the virus from the vaccine into flesh eating hyperactive monsters that are allergic to light and therefore emerge from the shadows only at night. How Robert survives while attempting to create a cure for the virus constitutes the main plot of the movie.
The movie flows nothing like a mainstream blockbuster (which most certainly it will be). For the majority of the movie, Will Smith is the only human character around and he entertains himself by talking to his dog, hitting on female mannequins in video rental stores, hitting golf balls from an aircraft carriers into New York city and (best of all) gathering corn and hunting game in a deserted and now overgrown downtown Manhattan. The only hint of menace in his seemingly pleasant routine comes when his watch alarm reminds him that nightfall is at hand and he rushes home to barricade himself from the marauding monsters and to work on a cure for the virus.
The movie has several things going for it. First, this is a great suspense movie. Like all good horror/suspense movies, it understands that what is lurking in the shadows or just out of our field of vision can scare us far more than any horrific sight that the filmmakers can conjure up. The moments in 'I am Legend' that are truly scary (and there are several) come from what we don't see rather than what we can. Second, hard as it may be to believe the movie can be quite philosophical if you know how to look. The thought of being the last human being on earth while being deeply unsettling also raises questions about god and our existence. The movie does not spend too much time on it, but the eerie loneliness of the streets of New York and the screams of the monsters in the night outside Robert's house force us to ask what it would be like to be all alone and whether we already are not. Third and last, Will Smith who has grown from film to film over the last several years has turned in a great performance as a man focused on the job at hand while being tormented by great and unusual adversity.
Net, I am Legend is definitely worth a watch. Regardless of what you expect - a holiday potboiler like I did, a mindless action flick or a deep and powerful action adventure - you are likely to leave the cinema with a little more than you bargained for.