By Brandon Nolta

The year is 2012. Three years after a modest doctor (Emma Thompson in an uncredited cameo) develops a genetically engineered cure for cancer, the world is empty of human life. The helpful virus mutated into a nasty one, becoming a plague that wiped out 90% of humanity and changed most of the rest into unspeakably fierce nocturnal predators. In the deserted grass-and-asphalt jungle that was New York City, Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) wanders the streets, foraging for supplies with his trusty dog Sam and continuing his work: finding a compound to cure the disease that made him, as far as he knows, the last man on Earth, and turn the monsters back to the humans they used to be.

At first glance, one might suspect I AM LEGEND might not work out so well. Francis Lawrence, the director, has directed exactly one feature before this—CONSTANTINE—which didn’t exactly wow everybody. The movie was produced and co-written by Akiva Goldsman, who despite his Oscar is best known for turning out screenplays ranging from silly dreck (I, ROBOT) to crap so dumb it reduces the audience’s IQ (BATMAN & ROBIN, LOST IN SPACE). And, anyone familiar with the story probably doesn’t think of Big Willie in the title role as a first, second or third choice.

Wonder of wonders, the stars aligned for once. I AM LEGEND turns out to be a rarity in mainstream cinema: a thoughtful, ruminative action flick, centered on a fully realized hero who manages to be flawed and noble in the same moment. The original novel by Richard Matheson, a minor classic in the field, has been filmed twice before (and is considered to be an influence on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), but this is perhaps the most thoughtful and hopeful of the three.


Smith has long been renowned for his ability to open movies in a big way, even films that turned out to suck (WILD WILD WEST, anyone?), but this is the first time he’s been asked to carry a film virtually singlehandedly, and the Fresh Prince is up to the challenge. Except in flashbacks, Will spends nearly the entire running time of the film talking to himself or his dog, and yet you never see shtick. Neville is a complex man, intelligent and driven, yet guilt-ridden and just a bit arrogant, and Smith brings all these qualities to the front without losing sympathy or giving short shrift to Neville’s flaws. One of the reasons the original novel works as well as it does is because Matheson pulled off a moral inversion of viewpoint that is so smooth and assured that the reader is completely blindsided by the 180 the book takes. This inversion, unsurprisingly, is not in the film, but the screenwriters leave hints that they were thinking about it, and Smith incorporates these hints into his character without breaking stride. Neville’s guilt about surviving the plague, his obsessive quest to cure the monsters that remain, his nightmares about his family; all these come wrapped in the Smith charm, but ground down by time and loneliness. It’s a rich performance, and the movie would completely fail without it.

Despite a thematic misstep by clumsily squeezing in a science vs. faith current to Neville’s dilemma—a case of Hollywood trying not to lose the faithful by relying too much on science—Goldsman and Lawrence make lots of smart choices otherwise. Lots of background info is filled in economically (check out the newspaper headlines taped up in an apartment Neville visits halfway through the film), and the screenplay doesn’t strain for effect, letting glances and background noise carry as much weight as exposition. Where Lawrence in particular succeeds is in setting the look and sound of the film. As befits a movie about a solitary character in an empty world, the film is very quiet; there’s little incidental music or traditional scoring, and even the screeching and action scenes seem subdued in comparison. The outdoor scenes were filmed in mostly late afternoon light, giving even the scariest dusk scenes a near-painterly glow. Making New York seem pastoral ought to get somebody an Oscar.


As a fan of the original novel, I approached the film with mixed emotions: excitement to finally see this film hit the screen (it’s been in the works for 15 years or more), trepidation that they would pooch it, curiosity to see how Big Willie Style applies to Matheson’s classic. I’m tickled to report that Smith and company make it work, and the trepidation was unnecessary. I AM LEGEND is a thoughtful, even moving film, and whatever Smith got paid for this project, he earned every penny.