I AM LEGEND is a bittersweet tale of all that is best and worst about humanity, and a cautionary one about good intentions. It’s also one of Will Smith’s best performances as Robert Neville, the scientist driven by guilt to save humanity single-handed while and fighting his growing sense of nihilism after three years and counting since the plague wiped out everyone and left him marooned on Manhattan with only Samantha, his doughty German shepherd for company. He spends his days in mostly his basement lab. He ventures forth to hunt the deer that have overrun the city, farm corn in Central Park, and visit with the ersatz community he has created from made up of mannequins, and to wait at noon every day in the same spot for someone to answer the invitation to join him he sent out over shortwave. His nights are spent in his posh townhouse, locked up tight against the people who didn’t die of the plague, but who did come down with something that rendered them a nasty cross between a zombie and a vampire. Very nasty, but prone to frying in sunlight and not being terribly bright.
The good intentions here came in the form of a cure for cancer that worked every time. The catch is that the cure was a genetically mutated virus, measles to be precise, that did the trick and tampering with Mother Nature is always a dicey proposition. In this case, the ci-mentioned side-effects. Neville is immune to the virus. His dog, like all canines, is immune to only the airborne strain. Neville is not, however, immune to the crushing loneliness, which has made him callous to the deadly experiments he runs on the infected former humans that he can trap. The trauma of being alone has also made him prone to nightmares and to flashbacks, which, along with the recorded news broadcasts that Neville watches while eating breakfast, also do a nice job of filling in why the Brooklyn Bridge has been truncated, and why Neville’s wife and kid aren’t there.
The film is at its best when it shows just how easily New York City can do without a bustling civilization. Neville may have stocked his home with art from the city’s best museums, he may not have to stand in line at the video store he visits daily (he’s halfway through the “G”s), and may be able to drive his pick of snazzy cars at full speed through the weed-strewn streets, but the palpable emptiness is crushing. Christmas decorations leftover from three years before, the empty apartments he wanders through scavenging for goods, and those mannequins Neville has dressed up and posed around his neighborhood are the outward symptoms of a life as truncated as that bridge. This zeitgeist, as well as Smith’s intensity played with a light touch and a well of despair, have a visceral impact. The trick is to spin a story out it, and here the film stumbles. The back story about why this is Neville’s particular battle is sketchy, and never quite made clear, despite clues cobbled together from the tell-tale magazine cover with his picture on it and the way the military came to save him and his family as Manhattan was crumbling.
There is also the familiarity of where this sort of plot can go that the flick follows slavishly. Are the infected semi-humans, all flashing teeth and aggression, getting smarter? Will anyone show up to keep Neville company? And what will happen to the dog that has kept what little of Neville’s sanity is left intact? There are few surprises. There is however, a fine sense of dramatic tension, including a sequence where a sliver of sunlight, quickly evaporating as the sun sets, becomes the only barrier between Neville and a pack of infected dogs snarling with the growl of pure, unreasoning evil.
I AM LEGEND tackles the theological implications of what humankind has wrought, as well as creating at least one startling image of mindlessly vicious former human beings not recognizing that there might be a cure for their condition because they don’t recognize that they are in a condition that needs curing. It rises above its clichés to become if not a classic, at least memorable as it aspires, but doesn’t quite succeed, in being more than just a horror flick as mindless as the roving mutants it showcases.
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