By Josh Moss
josh@louisville.com
It seems fitting that Will Smith’s newest film is titled I Am Legend because, for years now, he has pretty much been the sci-fi/action genre’s
smooth poster boy. It began in 1996 with Independence Day. (Remember how he slugged that alien in the head and said, “Welcome to Earth”? Priceless.) Then came Men In Black, Wild Wild West and I, Robot. Though each flick wasn’t necessarily critically lauded as a whole (okay, Wild Wild West sucked), it was always difficult to criticize Smith’s abilities. Which is basically the case this time around.
For much of I Am Legend, which opens Dec. 14, Smith — playing a biological scientist named Robert Neville who is searching for a cure to a virus that has annihilated the world’s population — is the only human being on screen. Think Tom Hanks in Cast Away, only the setting is Manhattan. (Smith’s real-life daughter Willow, for example, plays his kid in the movie but doesn’t get enough scenes to make an impact like Smith’s real-life son Jaden did in The Pursuit of Happyness.) The important thing to know is that the one-man show works. Smith makes the audience feel as isolated as he does and proves that other actors aren’t necessary to help him flex his skills. He can do it all on his own.
Based on author Richard Matheson’s 1954 sci-fi novel of the same name — which has already been adapted to the big screen twice before — I Am Leg/files/storyimages/takes place in 2012. Overgrown grass sprouts through cracks in New York’s streets, where deer and prides of lions roam between abandoned cars. Three years earlier, a mutated cure for cancer decimated seemingly all of humanity. Except for Neville. He’s immune to the virus. Everybody else? Well if they haven’t already died, they’ve turned into hairless, rabid, nocturnal creatures called Dark Seekers, which sort of resemble a muscular version of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Neville’s life is a lonely one. He borrows DVDs from a nearby store and talks to the mannequins. He orders his German shepherd Sam to eat her vegetables. He hunts in the streets with his semi-automatic assault rifle. Come nightfall, when the monsters emerge from the shadows, he curls up in his bathtub with his dog. He also works in his basement’s laboratory, experimenting on rats and, eventually, a Dark Seeker. Neville was a virologist/military officer who landed on a Time cover before the outbreak, and he still wants to find a cure and make things right.
Though director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) reveals some of Neville’s backstory through flashbacks — like what happened to his wife and daughter — there isn’t quite enough information to truly understand who Neville was before the virus plagued Earth. But what the film lacks in character development, it makes up in suspenseful scenes, like the one in which Neville chases his dog into a pitch-black warehouse with only the light attached to his gun’s barrel leading the way.
Visually, a deserted, unkempt New York is as eerie as it sounds, though it’s worth noting that some of the computer-generated effects — the deer, for example — look a bit choppy. This, of course, isn’t Smith’s fault. No matter the scene, he is a man tiptoeing on the edge of insanity, struggling to keep his faith.
Late in the movie, underdeveloped plot points and forced symbolism make I Am Legend lose some of its steam. Plus, there are probably too many Bob Marley references. Just chalk ‘em up as a few more things Smith has to overcome. Like always, he does it effortlessly.
