Third Time's A Charm

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2008)

This is the third incarnation of the original novel "I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson and undoubtedly the best in terms of entertainment and production values. The first filmed in 1964 starred Vincent Price and was titled "The Last Man On Earth". It was very faithful to the novel and very pessimistic, with a grim ending in which the last human being dies and humanity is now a race of vampires. The second adaptation, 1971's "The Omega Man", starred Charlton Heston. It was more freely adapted from the source material and the main character was changed into a medical military researcher capable of developing a cure for the virus. The ending, in which the main character dies, was altered so that he lived long enough to donate his blood to those who were uninfected so they could treat others and reverse the disease.
This version, starring Will Smith as the lone survivor Dr. Robert Neville, is essentially the second version lifted straight from the screenplay, which is why "I Am Legend" credits John and Joyce Corrington, the screenwriters from "The Omega Man". There are updates and changes, of course, but the essential story remains the same: Man meddles with nature and the meddling produces a super-virus that kills ninety percent of the population and turns all but one percent of the survivors into rabid light-sensitive vampires. There's one uninfected person left who's learned to adapt to the situation in such a way as to stay safe and conduct experiments in an effort to find a cure for the virus. He does so having no clue whether or not his efforts are worthwhile; for all he knows, he's the last uninfected person on earth. Still, he keeps trying.
In the novel, there isn't really a chief villain to fight against nor a female to whom the soldier gets attached. The 1971 adaptation did try for both but that diluted the storyline too much. This version changed the villain to a more general one and kept the female presence to a bare minimum, so that the main actor had to carry the story essentially alone. Price was good, and Heston was better, but Smith is the best so far. He projects a vulnerability that makes his character more sympathetic than in the previous versions. His talking to the mannequins adds a nice touch of pathos; he's lonely almost to the point of insanity, yet he keeps going, working on trying to develop a cure. His only companion is his dog, Sam, that he takes hunting with him for the plentiful deer that have overrun New York City.
Flashbacks reveal the background to his current situation and how he lost his wife and daughter. Between excursions out to seek fresh meat---a hard to find commodity---and survivors that are even harder to find, he's working in a lab to develop a cure using rats. Eventually, Neville captures an infected female human to try things out, but it's slow going. In the interim, his dog gets infected trying to save him from a trap, and he has to kill her, then gets badly injured seeking revenge for her death. Just when things look bleakest, he's found by two uninfected people, a woman and a child, who help him but don't know enough to cover their scent. The infected track them to Neville's hideout and, even as Neville realizes his efforts to develop a cure on his infected lab subject have worked, the vampires start breaking in and he's out of time.
Giving the cure to the two people who found him, Neville shuts them inside a safe place and waits as a group of infected humans finish breaking into his lab. He runs at them with a live hand grenade, in effect sacrificing himself for the cure. The woman and child make it to Vermont, where the cold has kept the virus in check, and deliver the cure to medical personnel who will know how to replicate and use it. The ending, like in the 1971 version, gives a small glimmer of hope that does not exist in either the novel or its 1964 film adaptation.
The pacing is good and the special effects very well done. The effects of sunlight on the infected people's skin are instantaneous burning, like being in a supercharged tanning bed. The vampires, though CGI, are creepy and well-crafted, and the dark seeker dogs are very scary. All of the acting is solid and Will Smith really shines in his role. Like Heston before him, he seems to have found a niche doing science fiction, but his acting is more natural and he's better at projecting emotional vulnerability. Of the three times "I Am Legend" has been brought to film, this is the best incarnation yet.