Starring: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith
Director: Francis Lawrence
Rated: M
I Am Legend has an interesting history. It was written as a novel by Richard Matheson who also wrote prolifically for the big screen and for television, including a number of the Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories in the 1960s and other horror films.
The novel was brought to the screen in a small-budget production filmed in Italy with Vincent Price as The Last Man on Earth in 1964.
In the early 1970s, it became an intriguing film, The Omega Man, with Charlton Heston, a film with interesting religious overtones.
There are religious overtones in this version which reverts to Matheson’s original title. There is God-talk, talk about evil and destruction and the absence of God, talk about prayer and providence.
This time Will Smith is Robert Neville, a scientist as well as a military man who has witnessed the destruction of the human race because of a virus run rampant, an alleged cure for cancer (explained in the prologue of the film by an uncredited Emma Thompson) that proved the arrogance of scientists and the destructive consequences for human beings (a constant theme of science fiction films and an issue going back, at least, to Frankenstein).
Neville drives around New York City – and the effects to show the empty city, the damage, the abandoned cars, the weeds now growing are excellent.
Psychologically, the film is interesting in its dramatizing of a man, immune from the virus, whose only companion is the family dog, who lives in grief-filled memories of his wife and daughter and the evacuation of the city, and replays of TV news bulletins (and watching and mouthing to Shrek).
He broadcasts out of New York just in case there are any survivors.
He patrols during the day, works in his laboratory at night to try to find a remedy.
During the night he is in danger from hoards of mutants (straight out of special effects for ghoul movies) whose minds have gone and are innately vicious.
The only hope for humanity is if there is a small community of people who are not infected and if there is a remedy to prevent the spread of the infection and heal victims.
Will Smith has a presence and charm that means there is no difficulty in his keeping our interest and attention throughout the film. There are moments of eerie tension, moments of shock, moments of life-and-death combat and the will to survive.
One of the advantages of The Omega Man over the present film is that the mutants were victims of radiation but that they had not lost their intelligence.
Rather, they were like a brotherhood of darkness, puritanical, bent on the destruction of civilization which they blamed for what had happened. They were led by a sinisterly charismatic leader (Anthony Zerbe) who was humanly plausible in his appeal, but deadly.
Another interesting feature of The Omega Man was Charlton Heston’s self-sacrifice, a lance piercing his side against the background of a cross with blood flowing into the water.
I Am Legend has opted for the horror film scenario in its creation of its mutants and a more ‘secular’ imagery for its sacrifice.
Nevertheless, this is a smooth and effective thriller which raises all kinds of issues about life, survival – and a reminder as we look at all the ‘things’, all the possession left behind, that they are ultimately nothing compared with the basic human values and with life.
