I Am Lacking

Rating: 4/10 (1 June 2008)

Let's get my history out of the way first. I'm a big fan of the groundbreaking book. It represents the first and perhaps the most defining modern horror/fantasy novella ever to re-position the genre in genuine and contemporary circumstances which are recognisable and relatable to most of us. No Gothic castles or dense European locales replete with dark-haired men in capes slavering over bodice bursting virgins. Horror fiction came home. It roosted it's lethal vampiric form in the suburban and the urban. And a new genre was born. Stephen King is merely one writer who accredits IAL as being his major literary influence. It reinvented the genre. It deserves respect. More so than the movies has ever given it.
There has been no satisfactory cinematic version to date, and Will Smith's update is no exception. "The Last Man On Earth" was cheap, poorly edited, badly shot and gratuitously schlocky. "The Omega Man" turned its' premise into a hippie-based pseudo-religious fable and the undead into a mutated cabal of cult followers in monk-like garb. Way out sheet, man! Then along comes Will. And a $150, 000, 000 budget. So, what do we get for entertainment in this day an age and at this particular price? I'd like to pick out the plus points. The depiction of a ruined, desolate city, ravaged by plague is superbly rendered. The production values are well represented up there on the screen and it shows where they spent a lot of the dough. Will acquits himself fairly well, especially in the scene where he kills his only companion  the infected German Sheppard. He tries really hard to give a value-for-money emotive performance and comes close to pulling it off on a few occasions. The art direction is spot on and the whole production glows with that big-budget epic sheen. The ending  and Neville's fate  was, I think, a brave move for such a big-budget production, and I applaud the producers for taking the route they did.
The downsides: The film comes off as flat as a pancake and almost pleasantly banal. I have long since accepted that Hollywood is incapable of filming a straight adaptation of Matheson's scary and atmospheric novel, so I wasn't expecting that. I was, however, expecting some visceral thrills, chills, spills and jolts along the lines of the "28 Days/Weeks Later" movies at the very least. There's a lack of real blood and guts and the CGI rendered infected mutants are quite tame and poorly rendered overall. They were not frightening and imposing in the way that the infected in the "28 Days/Weeks Later" films were. I suppose because in IAL they looked like what they were for the most part  computer generated animations. They did not present as remotely real or realistic. Impossible, therefore, to take seriously. I'm going to assume the shock/horror/gore was deliberately toned way down to avoid getting an "R" rating Stateside and thus perhaps limiting the films box-office appeal. In the process, the movie had its claws trimmed and impact diluted.
IAL generates little atmosphere. Heston's "The Omega Man" sees the protagonist cruising deserted streets littered with decaying corpses, shooting at anything that moves with his machine gun, a paranoid loner close to the edge. It strikes a primal chord. IAL gives us a flashy superstar racing at high speed through too-clean looking, corpse free cityscapes, hunting deer with his rifle and his dog, chilling out to Bob Marley. It's not apocalyptically unsettling or unnerving. Will seems to be having a little too much fun, whereas Chuck was understandably becoming increasingly mad, bad and dangerous to know.
The script is littered with some truly clunking dialogue and Will does his best with it. Ultimately, though, he is sorely miscast and too darn friendly, cosy and nice generally to project the edgy, paranoid, grief-stricken obsessive personality of Neville in anything approximating a believable frame of reference. It's not that he's out of his depth, just in the wrong picture for his particular talents.
I'm not going to dwell on the inconsistencies in the script or how, for a supposedly intelligent guy, Neville fails to see the infected as socially evolving  there is a "leader" who shows open defiance by venturing into sunlight, luring him into a trap and sets infected dogs on him (clear evidence of an ordered thought process). Instead, he sees them as devolving to a more sub-human state. For a scientist, that's not very bright.
Bottom line, yes, I was moderately entertained for the duration, the film held my attention despite very little adherence to or respect for the source material. Although miscast, Smith approaches his role with commendable enthusiasm but is badly let down by the shoddy script and the awesomely detached performances of Alice Braga and Charlie Tahan. It would have been a nice touch if Anna and Ethan had turned out to be further evolutionary mutations of the infection out to capture Neville and not be just arbitrarily immune  tipping a nod to the book at least  but it was not to be.
Although it's a futile hope, one day someone somewhere may see the validity in realising in cinematic terms "I Am Legend" as a faithful representation of the book in terms of its' content and themes. Until then, I'm afraid the current version will have to do, lacking as it is.