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I Am Legend - Movie Review Hot

Movie Reviews

Release Date: December 14, 2007
Studio: Warner Bros.
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Genre: Horror • Thriller
Director: Francis Lawrence
Writers: Mark Protosevich, Akiva Goldsman, Richard Matheson
Cast: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Salli Richardson
Synopsis: Robert Neville (Will Smith) is a brilliant scientist, but even he could not contain the terrible virus that was unstoppable, incurable...and manmade. Somehow immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City...and maybe the world. But he is not alone. He is surrounded by "the Infected"--victims of the plague who have mutated into carnivorous beings who can only exist in the dark and who will devour or infect anyone or anything in their path. For three years, Neville has spent his days scavenging for food and supplies and faithfully sending out radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. All the while, 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 his blood is also what The Infected hunt, and Neville knows he is outnumbered and quickly running out of time.
The Review: Your Critics for the Evening: :
M: The Hardcore Fan of the Book.
Deez: The Horror Movie Freak, doesn't read (...not that I'm illiterate, It's just a matter of time-economics- why spend 20+ hours reading a novel when I can see the movie in 1.5?)
Ror: The Jumpy Girlie

The Three-Way Showdown-

M: Oh boy where do I start with this?

I'll get into where the movie fails to live up to the original story later and just talk about this as a stand alone film...for now.
The sheer creepiness of seeing New York emptied out like a Billy Ray Cyrus concert (circa 2007) is just profound. It's a character all in itself and sets the mood and tone for the entire framework of the film (keep your eyes peeled for the Batman/Superman: Worlds Finest movie poster).

Deez: You said it, buddy! The City of New York, transformed into a post apocalyptic wasteland was absolutely JAW-DROPPING!!! Having been to the Big Apple a few times this year, I was absolutely amazed to see what is normally such a packed, busy city reduced to a desolate ghost town.

Ror: I did love the vision of post-mankind New York. There's a freak in me that loves apocalypse movies - not sure why, but this flick did a great job of satisfying that jones. The effects and set design were chillingly well done and deserve notice.

M: Now with so much effort and money being put into the feat of making New York empty it makes you wonder just what in the hell they were thinking about when it came to the beasties in this flick? Instead of putting real people into some killer FX makeup they ran with some garage sale rejects from the first Mummy film? Not only do they look horrible they actually make your eyes feel annoyed, which only adds to the fact that all they do is roar really loud and annoy your auditory senses as well. If I was the last man on earth and left with these things I'd be PISSED! Hell I'd find a way to level the city just to shut'em the fuck up.

Deez: Tell me about it! It makes absolutely no sense that these were CGI creatures; they don't do anything that real people could not have done, and there was never any shot that had enough of them to warrant the CGI.

Yes, for all the jaw-dropping bad-assness that was decimated New York, the Beasties in the movie just looked like crap! I've seen better CGI in a Star Trek fan film (not that I actually ever watched a Star Trek fan film.. I just happened to be at someone's house, and it was on the TV)...But I digress...

M: Will Smith is effective as the last man on Earth; sure, they balance the character with classic Smith goofs. It has to be in there, this type of story is so damn dark and lonely it required to keep the audience interested and to interrupt the long periods of silence. Like many others I had my doubts that he could pull off this role...but those doubts are based on the book and most of the really dark portions have been left out of this movie. He pulls off what's in the script and does it well.

Ror: I agree. Smith did an amazing job considering the genre - it's tough to have range like he did when acting opposite mannequins and a German Shepherd, but he had me in tears a couple of times. Considering I've loathed and feared Shepherds since childhood, that's amazing.

My only real complaint about the movie was the gratuitous scare technique. There were some great opportunities for legitimate nightmares, mostly squandered. Instead, loud noise and sudden movement photography were overused until I'd left bruises on both M & Deez by repeatedly and violently jumping out of my skin. Lame thrills done dirt cheap.

Deez: Score one for the sound designer! Yeah, there were a lot of cheap sound-cue scares to pump up the horror quotient. Totally effective but largely unnecessary...

Ror: Much like M, I was disappointed by the "beasties". The movie couldn't decide whether to go with plausible scenarios or with sci-fi mutations, which ended up leaving me unusually nightmare-free, and Deez off the hook for having snuck a Horror flick into the lineup.

What was frighteningly real was the threat of human annihilation; any movie that has me plotting worst-case-scenario zombie escape plans for my family has done something right. Unless it was an Andy Dick movie, but let's face it - I don't have the balls to attend anything like that.

Deez: Over all, I dug the flick! Having not read the book, I can say that is makes for a great stand-alone movie (although M did school me on some of the coolness in the book that was left out of this movie... I gotta say, my ass is going to Barnes and Noble first thing in the morning).

M: I have to admit I'm finding a hard time wrapping my mind around what I saw and how I feel about it. As a stand alone film it's not bad, it's just not great and what's frustrating is how blatantly ignored the chances are for greatness even with the direction they chose to take it. As an adaptation to one of my favorite stories I feel like someone just punched me in the nut sack.

Ror: That was me - I knew I left a mark somewhere. My bad.

M: I left myself open for that one. It's what I get for wearing a kilt on movie night.

Deez: 3.5 / 5.0
Ror: 2.5/5.0
M: 2.0/5.0

M: Now let me get into the thick of this for those not looking to get long a spoiler heavy rant on...you are free to just skip to the cool pics below.....you've been warned; while I appreciate the flashback way of filling in the gaps and to keep the pace moving they seem to have forgotten what makes I Am Legend worth telling on the big screen. This is a story of loneliness with the price of self preservation. What drives a man to go on living in the middle of the apocalypse? Neville is a loathsome bastard who has totally forgotten how to relate to anyone, he curses and drinks himself to sleep and often has trouble control his basic sexual urges. Here he's just driven to "fix" this mess. Not nearly enough really to keep a man going.

He's a man so lonely that by the time he spots an uninfected dog he's obsessed with getting the dog into his home, not just to study but because he so desperately needs a friend. It's the dog that turns his mental state around, which is what makes the dogs death so heart breaking. He didn't start out with this dog, he had to earn it and earn the dogs love. Ok sure maybe this is a minor point on the surface but in the context of the story it's HUGE!!

Now let's go back to the beasties in this story; in the book they knew where he lived because the leader of the local vampire union was his best friend and car pooling buddy, and every single night they'd show up at his place and hold anti-Neville pep rallies while trying to break his defenses. The men would bust stuff and the women would show him their "goods" and hope to draw him outside. They were NOT hairless screaming morons!

In the latter part of the story, after the death of Neville's dog, he finds a lone woman and pretty much kidnaps her and abuses the hell out of her trying to figure out her story. His mental state is that of a classic abusive person that wants to stop but he can't, he just simply doesn't know how anymore. Naturally the woman is a vampire spy and he finds himself betrayed.

By the end of the story you realize that Neville is more or less the missing link between human and vampire and for lack of a better term you learn that he's the bad guy in the way of progress as the vampires begin setting up a new society. He's legendary among the new vampire order (hence: I AM LEGEND) and there's simply no place for a killer like him.

In the film there seem to be hints at some of this being the bigger picture when he abducts a female subject, it's clearly the mate of the lead mutant in charge. But reshoots and editing have all but taken this out of the plot and we are left with just those scream morons running about.

This might sound like a "The Book Was Better" rant but I assure you it's only half that. Over the years I have learned to live with less than stellar movies based on books or comic books, it sucks but its life. But my issue is that not only did this movie ignore the cooler points of the story it simply missed the mark when the target was three feet in front of them.

AND yes I understand that nobody would make the exact movie I'm talking about above, but there is a reason that this is the third adaptation of this into a movie and none of them have come close to hitting the target. Still all things being equal....sure glad as hell they never made that version for Arnold.....that would have been a suckfest of a different nature.

As a stand alone movie I can see a decent directors cut in the future being much better, as an adaptation of the book this is just an awful mess.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5

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