304 - I Am Legend review

“I Am Legend” might be the first film to convincingly portray contemporary New York City as a nature preserve. It’s 2012, and a plague has wiped out most of the world, leaving but a handful of survivors. That the plague started out as a cure for cancer suggests a thing or two about how man’s efforts to better himself can backfire spectacularly and violently.

Will Smith stars as Robert Neville, the last man alive in New York City, and for all he knows, the entire world. Neville spends his days alone except for his dog Sam, cruising the streets in a sports car, competing with lions for deer in Times Square, testing out plague vaccines on animals, and cowering in an armored house by night.

See, Neville is immune to the plague, but so were millions. Unfortunately, most that did not die from it turned into mutants of the bloodthirsty variety, as if there were any other kind. The mutants are vulnerable to UV rays, so they avoid the sun like the plague (pun intended) and wait until night to prowl the streets.

Neville has a lab in his basement that he uses to experiment on various animals, and if he’s lucky, a captured mutant. Through a few flashbacks, we see how Neville lost his family and what society looked like immediately before it shattered. Every day at noon he heads to a dock and waits for other survivors that never arrive.

Seeing as Neville spends the majority of the film alone, it’s up to Smith to carry the film, and it shouldn’t surprise moviegoers that he’s more than up to the task. The gee-whiz attitude typical of his action heroes is mostly gone, replaced by a grim determination to survive and an isolated persona that often teeters on the edge of madness. It’s a performance at least as strong as his Oscar-nominated one in “The Pursuit of Happyness,” and probably a more difficult one to pull off. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that the only sure-thing movie star left alive plays the world’s last man.

For a big budget holiday film, “I Am Legend” is bleak and creepy, not shying away from gruesome encounters with unfortunate results, nor the hopelessness that pervades Neville’s day-to-day struggle. A scene that sees Neville searching a pitch-black, mutant infested warehouse is particularly unnerving, a feat considering that it’s a certainty that the last man on earth and star won’t be killed 40 minutes in.

Director Francis Lawrence, along with screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and Mark Protosevich, introduce a number of keen details, from the calm news report at the opening to the way the decaying billboards advertise a nonexistent film featuring Batman and Superman. The action sequences, while effects-heavy, are also more subdued than expected, analogous to the strong character work.

Though adapted from Richard Matheson’s 1954 vampire novel, many will undoubtedly think of “28 Days Later,” a similar horror film that sees a Britain annihilated by a contagious disease that transforms its victims psychotic. “I Am Legend” follows a similar (albeit vastly more expensive) formula, even replicating the way “28 Days Later” closed with a fair but somewhat contrived third act.

It finishes on a slightly awkward note, leaving behind a few too many questions. Are we really to believe that the mutants couldn’t find Neville’s house for three years, or that he wouldn’t take more care when dealing with them than he does? Assuming he develops a cure, does Neville expect the mutants to set up appointments to get the shots? Minor quibbles, I suppose, considering that “I Am Legend” will allow most viewers to leave saying “I am satisfied.”

3.5 out of 5