Starring: Will Smith
Director: Francis Lawrence
Studio: Warner Bros.
Video: 2.4:1 anamorphic/enhanced for 16:9, 1080p HD
Audio: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1; English/French/Spanish DD 5.1 (Alt. version: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1, English DD 5.1)
Extras: “Creating I Am Legend” Mini documentary Gallery – over 50 minutes, “Cautionary Tale: The Science of I Am Legend” – explores the history of pandemic viral infections (in HD), 4 animated films on the impact of the virus in various parts of the world (in HD)
Length: 100 minutes; version with alternate ending 104 minutes
Rating: *****
This classic sci-fi novel has evidently been adapted for film twice before, but it would be difficult to top the amazing scenes of a desolated central New York City with weeds growing everywhere and deer and lions roaming freely. It is three years since a well-meaning researcher found a supposed cure for cancer in a vaccine which somehow later morphed into a deadly virus which killed most of the population and turned much of it into violent hairless creatures who killed all those somehow immune to the virus. The creatures are not called either vampires or zombies but share their modus operandi and are referred to as the Night Seekers.
Robert Neville is a military virologist who is the last human survivor in NYC and maybe in the world. He has set up a recording to continuously broadcast on all the AM stations trying to find others who may have survived in the world, and he hunts and gathers around NYC with his trusty German shepherd. That’s during the day, because at night he must fortify himself in his sealed-off apartment in Columbus Square. Meanwhile he attempts to find an antidote to the plague using his own immune blood, but all the night seekers he has brought into his lab have died.
The plague monsters are not shown until quite a ways into the film, which is effective. The extent of Neville’s loneliness is portrayed by his having conversations with the store-window dummies he has set up himself in some of the stores he regularly visits for supplies. he knows he may be running out of time to find a solution before the creatures finally find him.
The sci-fi thriller is well done and gripping, though it runs down a bit toward the end, seeming to make Neville’s confusion and pain more extreme than it needs to. He is depicted as eventually setting up a suicidal scenario, which doesn’t fit the rest of his character. I felt there could be more explanation of exactly how the disaster happened. There are brief flashbacks to the evacuation of NYC, but many questions are left unanswered. The transfer is excellent and the TrueHD surround pumps up the noisy portions to perfection. The four short animated films are more bloodily depressing than the feature, but rate high as artistic alternate animation. The HD documentary on the work of the CDC and their concerns about a true pandemic eventually occurring in the world may be more scary to many viewers than the feature itself.
– John Sunier
