Three cheers for the mutants!

Rating: 3/10 (15 December 2007)

First of all, I was wondering how the female survivor and her son were able to get out of NYC so easily at the end of the movie. If she drove her car maybe she would have taken the Henry Hudson Parkway to the Bronx and then upstate. But wait a second--if the Army blew up the Brooklyn Bridge in order to prevent people from leaving Manhattan, wouldn't they have blown up all the bridges? So how did the two get to the "colony"? Maybe she was able to drive the car on to the Staten Island Ferry and figure out how to operate it (if you believe a ridiculous scenario like that, you probably rated this movie a "10").
There were other things in "I am Legend" that I found to be too incredible to be believable. For example, when we first meet the mutants, they don't seem intelligent enough to hatch a plan to do anything except bite people. But toward the end, they seem to be organized with a leader, capable of going after Will Smith. And how did they figure out where Will Smith was living? All of a sudden they have such great intelligence? If they had such capabilities, why didn't they track Will Smith (in his home) earlier? Even if one was engrossed by the first two Acts of this script (and I wasn't completely), Act 3 fell apart completely. Will Smith is so depressed because he has no one to talk to and when he finally meets the female survivor and her son, instead of being overwhelmingly happy that he's no longer alone and can talk to somebody, he ends up almost immediately arguing with her about the existence of the 'colony'. The chemistry between the two is almost non-existent and the writers attempt to 'humanize' Will Smith by giving him some lame lines about how he likes reggae music.
And what about that scene where Will Smith is so depressed that he decides to play a game of kill-the-mutants with his car. I couldn't tell if this was one of Will Smith's dream sequences but if it wasn't, it didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Here's a guy who's been spending all his time trying to save humanity by finding a vaccine that will transform the mutants and after he loses his dog, he goes to the trouble of setting up floodlights at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge and (for kicks) tries to kill as many mutants as he can. Was he trying to commit suicide or was it the director's decision to (awkwardly) place the hero in jeopardy and get him out of it? If it was still night out, how was Will Smith able to drive home in the dark without being attacked by a horde of mutants? Most unimpressive were the flashback scenes explaining how the virus wiped out humanity. There's no buildup, no tension whatsoever. Within a few hours, the virus has infected most people in Manhattan and they're all trying to escape. The movie would have been much more compelling if the infection was gradual and we saw how people coped with the transformation of their neighbors.
Some reviewers have praised the film for its 'inspirational message'. In true 'faith-based' Christian fashion, it was God who told the female survivor that there was a colony in upstate New York (or was it Pennsylvania, I can't remember). But God takes a backseat when it comes to 'faith' in this movie. Rather it's "science" that's elevated to the status of true religion. "I am Legend" echoes the mantra which we've been hearing since the 50s that "science" somehow holds the key to solving our most unsolvable problems and allaying our deepest fears. The whole idea that a virus can in a matter of a few weeks (or even days or hours) can infect and destroy humankind is laughable. Even more laughable is that some scientist can come up with a "cure" in the form of a mysterious "vaccine" to reverse the effects of such a contagion. In reality, when people get sick from some kind of 'disease', it doesn't happen overnight. It usually takes years before symptoms manifest themselves. 'Scientists' have been trying to find a 'cure' for cancer for years and always boast that they're one step away from discovering the elusive clue. The same goes for the pie-in-sky stem cell research which has been touted as a potential panacea for most diseases. I'll believe more in I am Legend's mutants before I believe in stem cell researchers enabling paralytics to walk again! "I am Legend" has a few good special effects and that's why I give the film 3 stars. But even those cuddly mutants become tiresome after awhile. As for Will Smith--he was far superior in "I, Robot" which at least had a fairly engrossing story.
If you like Zombie movies coupled with pseudo-religious pontification, then I am Legend might be for you. Otherwise, exercise your brain by reading a book (non-fiction would be most preferable after coping with one shrieking zombie after another).