I Am Legend
can smith survive vampires and critics?
2007-12-13
By Sergio Mims

CAST: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Dash Mihok, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith

WRITTEN BY: Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldman

DIRECTED BY: Francis Lawrence

RATED PG-13

** TWO STARS

Will Smith’s new film I Am Legend will no doubt be another notch in his world’s-biggest-movie-star belt, adding to the worldwide billions that his films have bought in to grateful movie studios. Yet, the nagging question remains: Why is he so popular?  Smith’s over eager desire to please, his cool yet very square, cornball persona and his relentless obsession  to be so likable are the keys. There are no rough edges with Smith unlike Samuel L. Jackson, nor does he possess Denzel Washington’s smooth as silk, laid back, masculine confidence or the hard steel, pure masculinity of Jim Brown in his prime. Smith is, instead, everybody’s best friend. The totally safe, nonsexual, black man. He makes Wayne Brady look like Michael Vick. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Hollywood’s cheesiest actor would appear in a movie with some of the cheesiest special effects in any film this year.

Based on the 1954 classic sci-fi novel by Richard Matheson, it was first made in 1964 as The Last Man on Earth, a cheapo Italian horror film starring Vincent Price, and then again, more famously, in 1971 as the camp classic The Omega Man with Charlton Heston who was also given a love interest in the film in the form of a sultry, smoldering black woman, Rosalind Cash. Of course Smith, true to form in Legend, has no love interest and sex is the farthest thing from his mind.

In Legend, which is set in the near future, a new 100% guaranteed vaccine cure for cancer is announced causing mass rejoicing. However just three years later the effects of the vaccine are grim. Instead of curing people it either kills them or turns them into rapid cannibalistic vampires. The result is a deadly virus which has wiped out most of the world’s population except for the lucky few who are immune to the virus and the vampires who stalk their prey at night. Smith plays Robert Neville, an army scientist who, fortunately, is immune and is the only real person left in New York City working on a cure to destroy the virus. Most of the film is a one man show with Smith -- the last remnant of hope for mankind -- trapped in the treacherous urban jungle finding ways to survive and avoid being some cannibal’s last meal. After a couple of near- death scrapes, he comes across two survivors (Braga and Mihok) who are on their way to a survivor’s colony in Vermont while Smith must struggle to keep secret his efforts to find a cure or leave for the colony which he doesn’t believe exists.

For the first 30 or 40 minutes of the film are actually quite effective. The eerie mood of the weed spouting, cracked streets of New York, devoid of human life, are haunting, unnerving images that director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) exploits so well. And there are some genuinely suspenseful sequences in the film. Things go badly awry, however, after the vampires start making their appearance. Despite a reported $150 million budget (even more remarkable since it’s not up there on the screen) you would think the filmmakers would have had enough money to hire some actors and extras and a team of make-up artists to play the vampires in the film. Instead we get an army of CGI created phony looking vampires who are neither scary nor convincing. This is the curse of computer graphic images which effect seemingly every movie nowadays. All the high tech computers and artists simply can’t hide the fact that they’re basically cartoons. Having the heft and detail of real actors in
costume instead of computerized animation (see Last Man and Omega Man, both of which were made for a tiny fraction of the money that was spent on Legend) makes an enormous difference. When Smith blows away
some rabid vampire dog before it chews his face off, the effect isn’t convincing and we don’t feel the danger that’s he’s in.

After having Smith go through the rigors of finding a cure and battling cartoon vampires Legend has nowhere to go expect for rushed, out-of-nowhere big finale of a fight and shootout between Smith and the vampires, which leads to a conclusion surprisingly similar in tone to the novel’s and previous movies’ endings.  Still, there’s not that satisfied feeling one should get from a good film. Just the disappointment of a lot of missed opportunities

In the end,  I Am Legend will no doubt be another huge smash for Smith in his ever growing list of mediocre films in his quest for world domination  and no doubt that’s just the way he likes it.

Film critic, lecturer and festival consultant Sergio Mims covers all things film from the city that works, Chicago. He is a regular contributor to ebonyjet.com