Review: "I Am Legend"

Although it takes major liberties with its source material, “I Am Legend” is a taut, surprisingly strong sci-fi tale with a good lead performance by Will Smith as Robert Neville, US Army scientist and survivor of a global plague that wipes out 5.7 billion.

Three years later, Neville is mostly comfortable in his Manhattan home, hunting deer in sports cars, killing time with his beloved dog, and researching a plague cure in his fortified basement lab, research on human plague victims who versus dying, become rage-filled creatures who hide from the sun, but run loose at night.

As far as he knows, Neville is the last man on earth – protected from the plague by a natural immunity – but via a repeating AM radio broadcast, constantly seeks out other survivors, waiting for them each day on a lonely pier above the Hudson River.

Please, sing along: "To beat those monsters, 1-2-3...."

This is the jist of "Legend's" story; revealing anything further would spoil your experience.

Yet it’s significant breaks with author Richard Matheson’s original 1954 novel (which applies an extremely bleak ending) aside, I must give “I Am Legend” credit on several levels: it’s a smart, sleek, clever product which uses restraint in establishing both perilous and soul-numbing moments drawn from Neville’s endless days – this, versus subscribing to the Michael Bay theory of “Explosions, Saturated Filters = Good Storytelling.”

If I have any real problem with “Legend’s” final product, it’s that the end is indeed too rosy, too Spielbergian (see “War of The Worlds”) for my taste. Still, is it this conclusion enough to kill the movie’s stronger elements?

Not quite. But I’ll take what I got anyway.

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PS: By the bye, if the seven-minute “Dark Knight” teaser which preceded my screening of “I am Legend” is any indication, Heath Ledger is going to make an incredible Joker. The leaked trailer (due for formal release on Dec 16) is also fantastic. I have to give Chris Nolan a world of credit here - his interpretation of the Batman mythos has the potential to make all preceding examples (from Tim Burton onward) look like bad student films.

Finally, while cruising the net for other info on this stuff, someone noted that in both "TDK" previews at no time does Harvey Dent (AKA: Two-Face, played by Aaron Eckhart) show up - which is a good clue he will do so for the spring "TDK" trailer to run before summer movie season begins in May 2008.