It seems zombie dogs will be around after we're all gone

Rating: 7/10 (14 March 2008)

What is the deal with Will Smith? Every movie he comes out with is almost invariably going to be the best thing in theaters. I don't think he has come out with anything less than a hit since Wild Wild West, which itself was a hit but wasn't good. I've read that it's Smith's one regret, that the movie did so well despite being bad. I Am Legend, on the other hand, has all the ingredients of being a smash hit, and in most ways it is. There are more shortcomings in movie than we have come to expect from the latest Will Smith summer blockbuster (or winter blockbuster, as it were), but I have to say that the portrayal of post-apocalyptic New York City is so good that most people will be more than willing to overlook a lot of these things.
It's a zombie movie, to be sure, but a science fiction zombie movie, like only a few others, I think. Smith plays Robert Neville, the sole survivor of a man-made virus that has killed everyone in the world, it seems, except for the ones that have turned into astonishingly angry zombie-like creatures that only roam the streets at night. Neville has his trusty dog as his only companion as he desperately seeks a cure for the virus, spending his nights barricaded into a makeshift laboratory with steel shutters. As soon as we see him close those steel shutters for the first time, it's reasonable to assume that later there will be a problem with them.
Unfortunately, the movie opens as a Ford Mustang commercial, with Smith racing down the empty, weeded-over streets of what was once New York City, his engine revving angrily as he guns is through the streets, hunting the occasional deer that are now roaming the streets. Sadly, he loses his dinner to a lion, who is a better hunter than he is. Yeah, there are lions there, too.
Although I was a little put off by this at first, in retrospect I really appreciate the way they have presented the city's entropic regression into wilderness, with wild animals wandering and hunting where pedestrians once crowded.
The first half of the film introduces us to the empty city and Neville's struggle to find a cure, as well as explaining the rules of the zombies, you might say, which are really not much different than your standard zombie movie, except that these ones are faster, stronger, and angrier. Oh and they can't stand sunlight, maybe because the creatures in Richard Matheson's novel, on which the movie is based (after two other previous film adaptations) are vampires.
Neville spends his free time walking his dog around in certain stores, around which he has placed mannequins as though they are browsing shoppers, and with whom he exchanges greetings and small talk. This is a lonely man. It is the mannequins, however, that introduce the first major, major loose end. At one point Neville sees one of his mannequins placed somewhere other than where he left him, and he panics, screaming at the mannequin (calling him by name, by the way) and demanding to know what he's doing there. As he approaches, he is suddenly yanked off his feet by the rope that has been devised to trap him. He passes out hanging upside down but eventually escapes, barely making it back to his truck (another Ford, of course) before being eaten by CGI zombie dogs.
He escapes relatively clean, although his own dog doesn't fare so well. It's a heart wrenching scene, and Neville is understandably devastated. This event causes something to snap in him and he goes on a nighttime rampage against the zombies, killing as many as possible with his car and forgetting to wonder who set that trap in the first place.
It can be assumed that it was the zombies who set it, since during Neville's revenge campaign we can see that they have organized themselves into a stratified army, with foot soldiers and generals and everything. There is at least one shot that clearly shows one zombie general ordering forward a company of soldiers, who attack on command. This is a surprising development that sadly goes nowhere.
Before long a woman and her young son come into the story at a crucial moment for Neville and explain to him that there's a colony of survivors in Vermont, leaving Neville to wonder whether this is true or not and leaving the audience to wonder what she's doing on Manhattan Island, all bridges to which have been destroyed during a military quarantine to isolate the virus. At any rate, such is introduced the film's major weakness, as Neville ultimately makes it to the colony while the narrator carefully spoon-feeds us the film's message and meaning. I love that.
I Am Legend is definitely a fun movie. Like most of Smith's films, it's great popcorn fun, as they say. It is packed full of vacuous logic and plot holes, but that's part of the nature of this kind of film. The post-apocalyptic future is the thing that is going to be most remembered about the movie, and while there are an unfortunate number of other cheap weaknesses, it's still a fun ride!