"and then they got hungry." (I Am Legend (DVD))

Name: plipplop

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Product:	I Am Legend (DVD)
Date:	02/01/08 (130 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Spectacular visuals, fast-moving story

Disadvantages: Major plot holes, can't decide what it wants to be

In a post-Apocalyptic New York setting, military scientist Robert Neville is the last man alive. Spending his days in complete isolation, Neville works tirelessly to find a cure for a dreadful virus that has decimated the world's population. By day, he scours the city with dog Sam, looking for food and supplies, desperately hoping that another survivor will make contact. By night, it's a different matter; locked deep inside an original mansion house, Neville sleeps restlessly, as the denizens of the city come out to do their own hunting.....

Francis Lawrence's reworking of the classic novel is a monster-movie for the 21st century. Deviating widely from both the original source material and the 1970s film version, I Am Legend is initially gripping but loses its way some way towards the third and final act.

At a superficial level, Legend is eye-popping stuff, with Lawrence showing his flair for visual detail and popular culture. Early scenes filmed in a deserted New York have to be seen to be believed; popular landmarks covered in discarded quarantine screens, the streets overgrown with grass that grows deeply between the scores of abandoned cars. Conceived through a combination of bold location filming and after-the-event editing, Smith's solo adventures transport the viewer into a genuinely convincing world of devastation and isolation. Build-up to the inevitable confrontation with the diseased mutants is also effectively achieved, with an immediate emphasis on not going into the dark, shattered by the first, inevitable venture into the dark.

Scratch below the surface, however, and the finished product is ultimately far less convincing. Once again, it's the detail that fails to commit the viewer to the proceedings and the big budget special effects cannot gloss over the incongruities. Three years after the world's "healthy" population has apparently been eaten by the mutants, hordes of mutants still survive in New York City without any apparent source of food. By night, Dr Neville cowers in complete isolation, and yet we know that herds of deer wander the streets in apparent safety.

As is the genre-norm, mankind is once again portrayed at its most incompetent, with a selection of flashbacks scattered throughout Neville's unconscious that explain how we got where we are. Said flashbacks provide more opportunities for the "money shots" (the Brooklyn Bridge evacuation scene alone cost a reported $5million) and even more opportunities to remind us that if we were to be faced with such a catastrophe, we could surely rely on our governments to cock it all up (a timely warning in these days of bird flu and foot and mouth disease.) The flashbacks are welcome too; as the narrative starts to drift slightly, it isn't just Neville's sleep that is interrupted by the roar of a panicking crowd.

Will Smith is, as ever, excellent, and utterly convincing as a man living in mortal danger and complete, lonely isolation. Given the scope of the role, Smith's work is cut out form the beginning as it is left to him to single-handedly run the whole film. Smith once again proves that as a leading man, he can demonstrate both bravado and tenderness; his relationship with dog-friend Sam is both heart-warming and inevitably heart-breaking. More interestingly, Neville's character gradually starts to lose the plot and whilst this never ventures into the sketchy territory of the original novel, the focus on one man dealing with complete isolation adds a welcome and original human element to the story.

Nonetheless, I Am Legend is an awkward beast, unable to decide what it really wants to be. Danny Boyle's zombie terror-film 28 Days Later was closely inspired by the original novel, but whereas Boyle opted for blood and guts, I Am Legend instead treads a tamer path, restricting any real horror and replacing it with sporadic and disinterested action scenes (achieving a 15 certificate in the process). Lawrence's decision to replace real actors and prosthetics with computer-generated "mutants" may provide more ambitious action, but lacks the human ferocity of Boyle's outing. Indeed, the mutants of I Am Legend are actually not very convincing at all. There is a strange decision to give them some kind of leader, as though the audience would demand a head bad-guy to face off against Smith and in the end, the whole thing feels rather like a computer-game.

I Am Legend is typical of 21st century, big-budget cinema, full of expensive visuals and a popular leading man. It's all very watchable, of course, but fails to tick any of those boxes that might lead an audience to tell their friends that it's really very good - because it isn't.

I Am Legend was released in UK cinemas on December 26th 2007.

Summary: Five point four billion people. Dead.