I Am Legend (Blu-ray) (2007)

Los Angeles Times
"[S]lick, adrenaline-fueled fun....The first third of the movie is a high-octane joy ride through post-apocalyptic Manhattan..." 12/14/2007

Rolling Stone
3 stars out of 4 -- "It is totally cool to see Manhattan devoid of people as Will Smith and his dog roam the ruins....Director Francis Lawrence keeps you squirming." 12/27/2007 p.124

Empire
3 stars out of 5 -- "I AM LEGEND goes a surprisingly long way to explore psychology, and Smith fearlessly dives headfirst into the mind of an individual who's had no human contact for almost 40 months." 02/01/2008 p.44-45

Ultimate DVD
4 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's a lean, eerie sci-fi thriller with the kind of brains and heart not normally found in multiplex movies, and some genuinely affecting moments." 05/01/2008 p.71

Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
The opening scenes of "I Am Legend" have special effects so good that they just about compensate for some later special effects that are dicey. We see Manhattan three years after a deadly virus has killed every healthy human on the island, except one. The streets are overgrown with weeds, cars are abandoned, the infrastructure is beginning to collapse...In "I Am Legend," the situation raises questions of logic. If Neville firmly believes he is the last healthy man alive, who is the vaccine for? Only himself, I guess. Fair enough, although he faces a future of despair, no matter how long his cans of Spam and Dinty Moore beef stew hold out; dogs don't live forever...Given its setup, "I Am Legend" is well-constructed to involve us with Dr. Neville and his campaign to survive..."I Am Legend" does contain memorable scenes, as when the island is being evacuated, and when Neville says goodbye to his wife and daughter (Salli Richardson and Willow Smith), and when he confides in his dog (who is not computer-generated, most of the time, anyway). And if it is true that mankind has 100 years to live before we destroy our planet, it provides an enlightening vision of how Manhattan will look when it lives on without us. The movie works well while it's running, although it raises questions that later only mutate in our minds. - Roger Ebert
 
Variety 9 of 10
Remarkably eerie yet annoyingly larded with cheap horror-film shock effects, "I Am Legend" stands as an effective but also irksome adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic 1954 sci-fi novel. In what is to a considerable extent a solo turn as the last healthy human on a post-plague planet Earth, Will Smith strongly holds the screen in a one-man Alamo besieged by marauding cannibals...Although Smith's role may not be as difficult in certain ways as Tom Hanks' was in "Cast Away" -- Smith gets to move around a lot, indulge in eye-catching action scenes and interrelate with a wonderful dog rather than a volleyball -- they are comparable in that both parts required the actors to carry their films virtually singlehandedly, with long silent passages. Smith manages it very well, showboating only briefly to show off his newly trim physique and intermittently displaying the incipient madness that would surely come from being alone against an unrelenting threat...What remains most memorable about the picture are the images of a stark, uninhabited New York City; to this end, production designer Naomi Shohan, the large art department and visual effects teams and lenser Andrew Lesnie contributed much imagination and expertise. Tech side is all high-end. - Todd McCarthy