Review of I Am Legend (2007) by Rudy M — 19 Oct 2015

In this movie, Will Smith plays Robert Neville, the sole survivor in New York City after a plague kills most of humanity and transforms the rest into monsters. He's a virologist and wants to find a cure. Of course, things do not go exactly as planned.

Smith is great here as the melancholy but determined Neville. I don't know what happened to him lately, but 'After Earth' was plain terrible on every level and I'm not happy about all the sequels (Men in Black, Bad Boys 3 & 4) attached to his name. I had hoped he had more in him than The Fresh Prince, Agent J and Detective Mike.

Director Francis Lawrence ('Constantine', 'The Hunger Games' trilogy), does a great job here. But maybe this movie benefits most of Andrew Lesnie, the director of photography. His cinematography is great. Of course he'd shown that before with King Kong and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The production all-round is great. I could have done with a little less Bob Marley (music and references), but I survived.

Twice. This was the second time I've seen 'I am Legend' and I can't shake the feeling of a little disappointment. I don't know what it was, but in my memory, this movie was far better than what I experienced now. It wasn't terrible. But not as great as I thought it was.

Further research by my movie assistant revealed that there's an alternate ending to the movie, which is more in line with the source material (book). I watched it in a crappy 140px web stream with annoying commercials mixed in, but I have to say it marginally beats the theatre release. It's slower in pace, possibly not edited with the same kind of scrutiny that the theatre release got. I understand why it was not chosen for release, since it totally flips the script, but for some reason it struck a chord with me.

All in all, this movie is more than decent entertainment. These days you could watch way worse stuff.