Smith holds the film together almost single-handedly

Rating: 7/10 (15 December 2007)

In his sophomore offering, director Francis Lawrence (who debuted with 2005's Constantine) successfully turns Richard Matheson's half-century old sci-fi/horror novel into an enjoyable, truly memorable motion picture. Previously twice undertaken (once in 1964 and again in 1971), and both times ineffectively, Matheson's 1954 classic, I Am Legend, proved to be more than a difficult project. Though I'm sure it was no easier this time around (Warner Bros. has been working on this film for 13 years), Lawrence and his superstar, Will Smith, make strong efforts to hide it.
Smith plays the lead to Matheson's story (a role formerly played by Vincent Price in '64's The Last Man on Earth and Charles Laughton in '71's The Omega Man), a scientist named Robert Neville, perhaps the last human on earth, who roams the desolation that is New York City with his German shepherd three years following the apocalyptic release of a man-made virus.
After losing his family (which includes Smith's real-life daughter, Willow) to the hellish pandemic, Neville sets forth, resilient to find the curehe combines the knowledge and state of his "immunity" with slab-top experiments he conducts on its mutated victims. Nevertheless, he's a man tortured by the absence of human life, which is brought to the forefront of his psyche by horrible flashbacks (which are beyond disturbing in their plausibility and wrenching in their effect), and recollections of it. And as the film progresses, we watch as the man's burden takes its toll on him, gradually dragging him into madnessa show that is as saddening as it is well done.
Set in a not-so-distant future world, in which gas prices are nearly $7 per gallon and the "cure for cancer" is actually the culprit of the widespread sickness, the film opens with Neville ripping through the Big Apple's vacant streets in his red, white-striped Shelby GT 500, circa 2007, hunting a flock of deer. Subsequently, we learn his strict daily routineexercise, recreation, research, and sleepwhich he maintains for the sake of his sanity and survival.
But what would the last man in the world have to survive from? How about unremitting hordes of veiny, hairless mutantsthe products of the virus that decimated the world's population? Understandably, these villains make for the movie's weakest contribution. They feed into prominent horror-movie zombie clichés (super-human speed and strength) and exhibit abysmal CGI, while thrusting the film into action that undermines its initial intelligence.
But I Am Legend endures its dreadful flaws by staying closer to the original novel than any other cinematic version, by creating an incredible, eerie scene of desertion in the U.S.'s most lively mega-city (perfectly done with grassy, weed-plagued corners and streams of abandoned vehicles), and by casting the inimitable Will Smith to play its focused study Smith delivers an achingly good performance as the lone man, capturing our favor by allowing us into his predicament through delicate expressions of his own fear and yearning for human life. He probably won't be nominated for an Oscar for his role as Neville, but maybe he should. After all, Tom Hanks was for his part in Cast Away, and the only difference between Hanks' Chuck Nolan and Smith's Robert Neville is that Neville is considerably smarter and defies insanity with proactive rituals and physical conditioning (of course, it's to Neville's benefit that he, unlike Nolan, has an abundance of food and spends all of his time with a wonderful pooch, rather than a volleyball). Regardless, Smith does what few actors can: he holds the film together almost single-handedly and manages to keep viewers' attention for close to two hours.
The fact that I Am Legend swings back and forth between two genres is ultimately an advantageous trait, for, though the sci-fi portion is far better, the horror facets instill enough suspense and distribute enough scares to affirm Lawrence's film as one of good quality and massive entertainment.