First half good, second half embarrassing.

Rating: 5/10 (28 December 2007)

Having seen some promising trailers I today decided to go and see I Am Legend. The film kicks off with a newscaster interviewing a scientist about what is thought to be a cure for cancer. The scientist's amateurish method of helping the layman understand how the cure actually works - using the simile of a car and its driver - made me wonder whether the film would persist with this kind of dumbing down.
We are then taken instantly to the post-apocalyptic New York in which Robert Neville (Will Smith) lives. Just about everyone has either died or contracted some sort of zombie-ism because of KV, a virus originating from the genetically-modified measles virus which was used to try and cure cancer. This part having been brought in so soon you are hoping that the director will be able to quickly establish the sense of complete human absence, and at first the broken skyscrapers and the overgrown grass make you think that yes this is will make a nice backdrop for Will Smith to do his thing. But then come the zoo animals, the first of many CGI cock ups that this film will probably become famous for one day. We have deers, lions and, well, a distracting, generic looking computer-generated animal that looks like a cross between a bear and a liger.
Will Smith's interaction with his dog companion Sam is probably the best thing about the film, and it all happens within the first half hour or so. Will Smith does a very good job of conveying Neville's dependence on Sam for interaction and companionship, especially in an amusing scene involving Neville giving Sam a dog bath while listening to Bob Marley's 'Three Little Birds' (every little thing's gonna be alright).
During the first half of the film we are every now and then treated to a few emotionally charged flash backs that detail the evacuation of Manhattan and the separation of Neville from his family. A particularly touching scene involves a woman and her child frantically trying to beat the checkpoint despite the fact that she is infected.
The first interaction with a zombie occurs when Sam takes a detour through a dark area of town and into some building. Neville enters the building himself to rescue his friend and soon comes face to face with a horde of horrifically tame looking CGI zombies. An unflattering close-up of one the zombie's faces reveals every last computer-generated flaw, from their ridiculously fast animation frame rate to their laboured and drawn out facial expressions. Every time a zombie appears in this film you can't help but think you're playing a first-generation Xbox 360 game.
The final decent scene of the film has Neville hanging upside from a trap, and he and Sam have to escape from a tactical ambush that the zombies had planned out. Sam gets bitten by one of the zombie dogs while protecting his master and contracts KV, thus marking the end of a decent first half of the film.
Neville takes a mortally wounded Sam back to his home and holds him in his arms. A few moments of silence occurs and I thought to myself right there and then "I bet any second now, Will Smith will start singing Three Little Birds," and just as if by magic Will Smith read my mind and decided to give a broken, 'emotional' performance of that very song. If you had to state an exact point in the film at which the quality suddenly took a turn for the worse, this was it. A whole scene exhibiting a cringe-worthy caricature of the relationship that carried the first portion of the film. Neville then strangles his zombie-infected dog to death, but instead of seeing this scene we are treated to a two minutes mini-film of Will Smith's gurning face.
More fights with zombies in the dark ensue, and then out of nowhere Neville is saved by a woman called Anna who had responded to a radio message that Will had sent out. Her plan is to reach Vermont to live in a survivor's refuge community. Anna takes Neville back to his place and makes him a Sunday morning fry up. The film's director suddenly decides to remove all of the social skills and optimism that Neville had evidentially maintained in his interactions with his dog and have him turn into an unsympathetic and hopeless loser.
The film's biggest 'sin' is the utterly blunt pro-Christian subtext that is introduced after Sam's death. When Neville is saved, we see his rescuer's cross necklace dangle before his eyes. Later, we see some of Neville's wounds: punctures on his wrists. Then a chat between Anna and Neville reveals that Anna believes that God sent her there and that God will save them. In the second to last scene, Neville hands Anna a gourde containing the antidote to KV that he created in his laboratory, sends her out into the world and then becomes a martyr by hurling himself into a mob of computer-generated zombies, a scene that draws allegorical parallels with Jesus in the bible sacrificing himself to save mankind. Anna's journey from Brazil through the east coast of the America's locating survivors represents the Christian preaching work, and her eventual arrival at Vermont represents the ascendancy to heaven: the first building we see behind the huge gates is a Christian church.
Now I'm not saying that Christianity is a bad thing, or even that pro-Christian subtext in a film is a bad thing. What's bad is the fact that the subtext is so unsubtle that even Christians would take offence. The soliloquy that closes the film might as well say, "Christianity is the only answer to all of life's problems".
Too long; didn't read? First half is good, second half is an embarrassing glurge fest, and both halves are virtually ruined by laughable CGI.