Warner Bros. | 2007 | 100 mins | Rated PG-13 | Mar 18, 2008
Robert Neville is a brilliant scientist, but even he could not contain the terrible virus that was unstoppable, incurable, and man-made. Somehow immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and maybe the world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. But he is not alone. Mutant victims of the plague — The Infected — lurk in the shadows…watching Neville’s every move…waiting for him to make a fatal mistake. Perhaps mankind’s last, best hope, Neville is driven by only one remaining mission: to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus using his own immune blood. But he knows he is outnumbered…and quickly running out of time.
In I AM LEGEND, Will Smith joins the ranks of Vincent Price (in 1964’s THE LAST MAN ON EARTH) and Charlton Heston (in 1971’s OMEGA MAN) as the star of an adaptation of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel of the same name. Often surprising in its focus on loneliness and loss, this thoughtful, eerie, and restrained sci-fi horror film provides a parade of startling visuals, but never allows special effects to overcome the human element. Smith, in a strong performance very different from his usual persona, is Robert Neville, the lone survivor in a New York City where streets are overgrown and deer gambol among deserted automobiles. Following an epidemic, the Earth’s population has been turned into an army of nocturnal zombies. Immune to the virus, military scientist Neville searches for a cure in his Washington Square townhouse. Haunted by visions of his family leaving quarantined Manhattan two years prior, he drives through the city with his German Shepherd, Sam, by day and barricades his home from the monsters nightly. But when Anna (Alice Braga)–another immune stranger-finds him, they will have to fight the onslaught twice as hard.
Akiva Goldsman and Mark Protosevich’s emotionally-charged script showcases the charisma of Smith, who commands the screen alone for most of the picture (aside Abbey, a talented German Shepherd). Director Francis Lawrence (CONSTANTINE) uses music minimally, wisely allowing the eerie cityscapes to remain mostly silent. The set pieces, including an overgrown, deserted Times Square and a lion hunting a deer in the Flatrion District, are goosebump-inducing moments of stark beauty. Though some may question the rendering of the monsters in CGI instead of using actors, it does allow them to be frighteningly acrobatic. A chilling and effective adaptation of a horror classic, I AM LEGEND is also a thought-provoking piece of Hollywood filmmaking
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Product Details
Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Willow Smith
Francis Lawrence
AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
English
English, French, Spanish
Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
2.35:1
1
Rated PG-13
Warner Home Video
March 18, 2008
100 minutes
539 Customer Reviews
Customer Reviews
Alone at the bottom of the food chain
By Kasia, (New York City) - April 27, 2008
Usually I will read the book first but in this case seeing the trailer being played over and over stimulated my curiosity to the point of no return. Being a New Yorker made the whole experience really fun and interesting; recognizing sights I pass on my way to work every day with an eerie feeling of abandonment was something totally different. I would often think in my head about how crowded it gets and how I wish people would just go away but seeing it all empty and overgrowing with grass like a wild safari was worse than I could have imagined. I guess its better the way it is than suffering eternity alone the same way Robert Neville has.
Alone except for the companionship of Samantha, the loyal German Shepherd, Neville is hunting wild deer and gathering food growing amok through the city while punctually seeking shelter as soon as the day light ends. When darkness approaches so do the mutated bodies that were once human but now reduced to vampire like creatures who savagely will hunt and devour any living creature. His only mission left is finding the cure than can turn the beasts back into the living before he goes mad form being alone. Things start going wrong when Neville stops being the hunter and starts becoming the hunted, the dark alleys that look ominous contain something that is keen ob bringing him down. His daily routing gets disturbed and he can no longer live peacefully with the hopes of one day saving everyone, he needs to find the cure fast or he too will succumb to the dire fate that all others have met.
Visually stunning the movies makes you care for Neville, who was very well portrayed by Smith. He was alone but not overly distressed or crazed, he exercised, rented videos, cooked, watched Shrek and tried to stay as close to being sane as possible. The scary parts made me jump and yell at the TV the same way guys do when they watch sports but overall it was a fun and wild experience and it really made me want to read the book to see what the original idea for this story was. I wish there was less CG effects these days but so many movies are full of them that one can’t not see them for just this one reason. Other than that this was a real blast and I will want to see it again soon.
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