Review: I Am Legend

“I Am Legend” is a sci-fi/horror film starring Will Smith as Robert Neville, the lone survivor of a plague that has all but wiped out humankind in the near future of 2012. The movie is based on the 1954 novel of the same by Richard Matheson, and is quite possibly one of the best, if not the best, film of 2007.

The film begins in 2009, where a scientist, Dr. Alice Krippen, is explaining her cure for cancer by means of a genetically altered virus. Cut to three years later, where Neville, a military pathologist, is the only man alive in New York City and quite possibly the world. Neville spends his days wandering the city with his dog, Sam, searching for supplies, hunting deer and other animals that now roam loose, waiting for other survivors to respond to his radio broadcast, and trying to develop a cure to the plague.

Through flashbacks, we learn that Dr. Krippen’s “cure” is responsible for the plague, killing off 90 percent of the world’s population. Of the remaining ten percent, only a very small percentage, such as Neville, are completely immune, while the larger percentage have mutated into hairless, savage and bloodthirsty creatures that attack and kill anything in sight, but are harmed by sunlight.

Thus Neville must spend his nights holed up in his fortified townhouse while the mutants roam free, but also take care to avoid any area or building that is completely dark. But between his repeated failures at finding a cure and lack of human contact, Neville is starting to lose both hope and his sanity. And it seems that the mutants, which are first regarded as totally mindless, are smarter than first perceived …

The movie deviates greatly from Matheson’s original novel. The first is the character of Neville, who here is a scientist with a military background as opposed to the “average joe” character trying to survive in the original story. This actually seems to work in the film’s favor, giving the character a better chance for survival (his training allows him to better avoid the mutants as well as trap them for his experiments) and give him more to do in terms of looking for a cure. This makes Neville’s loss of hope all the more tragic, as you feel bad for him as his attempts at a cure result in failure after failure.

The other biggest change from the novel are the mutants themselves. In the original novel, the infectees have symptoms more akin to vampirism, making the novel the first to treat the concept of vampires in a scientific rather than supernatural sense.

Their rather mindless, savage nature makes them seem akin to George Romero-style zombies, which is ironic seeing Matheson’s novel is said to have helped influence the zombie genre as we know it. But even this change works in the film’s favor, as the savage nature of the mutants makes it all the more harder to deal with and avoid them as their first instinct is to attack on sight. The CGI used to create them is rather obvious but still works in making the mutants more inhuman, giving them a fluid motion not possible in real life.

Upon first glance, it would be easy to just disregard “I Am Legend” as just another genre film starring Will Smith. However, that assumption couldn’t be more wrong. Smith gives one of his best performances as Neville, struggling to not just survive and find a cure, but also keep his sanity, whether treating Sam like his own child (Sam is told repeated to exercise and eat vegetables) or interacting with mannequins he’s placed on the street as though they were real people.

This makes the situation all the more sad and tragic, especially when Neville starts to lose it. It’s this kind of character drama that is the real draw of the film, though there is plenty of action and edge-of-your-seat suspense to be had whenever Neville tries to avoid confrontation or escape from any mutants who find him. There’s even some humorous moments to be had, usually in the form of mock future news footage (like Shaquille O’Neal announcing his retirement in 2010) or movie posters (such as “Batman/Superman” or “Teen Titans”), giving an idea of what could happen in the near future.

Needless to say, between Smith’s performance and the various elements, this is a great film. Some may not enjoy it as much as Matheson’s original novel, but like all adaptation, it manages to hold its own and tell a compelling story. This is one you have to see in the theaters.