The Definitive Sounds of Silence

Rating: 9/10 (9 March 2009)

All those harsh critics will like condemn "I Am Legend" as being a cheap remake of "Robinson Crusoe" and the 2000 movie "Castaway" starring Tom Hanks. When in reality, "I Am Lengend" is actually a tribute to the classic movie from 1971 titled "The Omega Man" starring Charlton Heston about a deadly virus that wipes out the human population. After watching this movie again, I found it to be very out-dated by today's standards, therefore this remake seems more up to par with today's modern world and will likely have an impact with today's generation.
The way a remake should be done is modeled by the more recent "Dawn of the Dead" compared to its predecessor. The original version of "Dawn of the Dead" was lagging in pace, but touched upon many issues. Whereas, the remake was equally riveting because it was a whole different ball game overall filled with more original idea compared to the original. "I Am Legend" succeeds in that path as well, by creating new ideas and a different concept to the story.
Like in "The Omega Man", "I Am Legend" has a fraction of the people passive from the virus and others morph into mutants. Unlike "The Omega Man" where the mutants are intellectual and function well in society, "I Am Legend" takes a 360 degree turn by making the mutants as a homage to the old classic zombie movies as being scary and dumb.
Another major key element to the success of "I Am Legend" is the wonderful performance of Will Smith. Usually I'm used to seeing him perform in a fast paced manner, here he's taking his performance in strides. And acting by himself in most of the movie can be very complex. Just ask Tom Hanks in "Castaway" and the only things that are surrounding you are a CGI mutants and a dog.
Director Francis Lawrence deserves plenty of kudos for creating a dark and brooding image which creates the lonely isolated atmosphere that was brought to life here. And without the sounds of music in the background, the quietness in the background is rather effective. Then when the zombies come out to play, is when the sounds of silence is broken.
The narration is brilliantly nuanced in its entirety. Sure it would've been a standard zombie movie with the population wipe-out, the zombie takeover and a eclectic final climax. But Lawrence decides to take that pivotal one step ahead of the game by uncovering the wipe-out in a series of flashbacks throughout the movie. Also the little observations should be carefully noticed (i.e. the gas prices). The little things are what makes this movie real. For a disease prone people transforming into zombie flick, there is actually very moderate violence.
My only complaint is that the zombies in "The Omega Man" are coherent and seem to know where the leading character lives and knows his every move. In "I Am Legend", the zombies seem retarded and Robert Neville (Smith) can easily hide from those incoherent mutants. Perhaps it was done deliberately by Lawrence so he wouldn't be accused of plagiarism. But it scores high points in originality and it also works effectively by starting so fresh it doesn't feel like its a remake.