By Curt Schleier

This has been a terrible fall (in both senses of that word) for the movie business.  After a great summer, grosses are down dramatically from last year; films starring the biggest box office attractions around – Tom Cruise, Ben Stiller, Reese Witherspoon – all performed below expectations.

The good news is that that’s going to change with the release of I AM LEGEND, starring the soon-to-be-considered legendary Will Smith. It is a gripping sci-fi horror story that is even more pertinent today than when the book on which it is based was written in 1954.  It centers on one of the great apocalyptic fears: what happens when science screws too much with Mother Nature?

Pest-resistant crops and new medicines are all good, of course – until something goes wrong.  In I AM LEGEND, it is a re-engineered measles virus intended to cure cancer that turns virulent. 

It kills 90% of the world’s population and leaves about 600 million with a rabies-like infection that makes them fierce killers.  About 12 million healthy people were left with immunity, but all are eventually killed by the infected, called dark seekers because they come out only at night.

Well, almost all.  The only man left is Robert Neville (Will Smith), a scientist and military officer who has spent the last three years hoping to find something in his immunity that he can inject into the dark seekers to bring them back.  Thus far, he’s met nothing but failure.


He’s also failed in his efforts to find other human contacts.  He puts out a daily broadcast telling people that a survivor is alive in New York. But to no avail.  So Neville spent his time doing experiments in search of a cure, cruising the city with his German shepherd, and talking to store mannequins.

His life is carefully ordered. His alarm is set t go off at sunrise.  An alarm goes before sunset so he has time to return to his Washington Square townhouse before the dark seekers can come out and trail him.  He carefully sprinkles ammonia on the steps to hide his scent.  He tests and tests and tests and leaves a record of his work on six redundant hard drives.

But things start to go wrong when his dog becomes infected and has to be put down.  Neville goes out to get his revenge and is almost killed in the process.  But he’s saved by a young woman, Anna (Alice Braga), up from Maryland with her son, Ethan (Charlie Tahan).

She’d heard his radio announcement and came to join him. The two bicker about the future.  She wants to head to Vermont where there is a colony of survivors supposedly lives.  She believes in God and is certain that He brought them together.  But Neville, deep in despair, contends there are no survivors, there is no hope, and there is no God.

I AM LEGEND rises far above standard genre fare, because ultimately it is about a good man’s struggle to survive, about his refusal to give up in the face of unending obstacles.

A couple of notes about the film: Will Smith is no longer just a star.  He’s an actor who demonstrates that the chops he showed in Ali were not a fluke.  He runs the full gamut of emotions – from the death of his family while they were being evacuated from New York City early on – to elation when he believes he may have found a cure.  This is a bravura performance that frankly was superior to a couple of those nominated for Golden Globes.  The Fresh Prince is now clearly Hollywood royalty.


Also, location manager Paul Kramer deserves some kind of medal.  He somehow arranged a veritable tour of high profile areas in New York– ranging Park Avenue uptown to Washington Square downtown – and managed to keep people put of the camera’s eye.  The streets looked eerily deserted with deer and lion roaming through midtown.  How he was able to do that and keep normally brash Appleites from rebelling remains a mystery.

The movie isn’t perfect.  A number of questions linger after the final credits: how did Neville find fuel for his cars and generators, where did he get his seeming endless supply of food and medicines (none apparently with an expiration date), how was he able to equip his fortified home and lab?  Still, director Francis Lawrence, known mostly for music videos does a great job keeping the action moving.  Smith and LEGEND clearly are the cure for the industry funk.