Review of I Am Legend (2007) by Xgary X — 17 Oct 2012

Will Smith stars as a military researcher who is seemingly the last person left on Earth trying to find the cure for an engineered retro virus that has decimated the human population and turned many into mindless killing machines.

It seems to me that the reason a lot of people slated this film was solely because it was not a faithful adaptation of the book it takes its name from. I personally haven't read it and to be honest I don't care if it's faithful or not.

A carbon copy adaptation of a book does not necessarily make a good film and vice versa; the two are completely different media. The fact is that I found this pretty enjoyable. Will Smith is quite convincing as a man suffering the loneliness of total isolation and the scenes in the first hour of the film when the "enemy" is still unseen are very effective.

It's therefore a pity that it descends into the usual CGI infested Hollywood claptrap for the final half hour. It reminded me of 28 Days Later because of the similar scenario and unfortunately it suffers from the same problem; the set up is great but it didn't seem to know where to go from there.

Once the mother and son characters appeared it turned into a dodgy CGI-laden shoot em up and became far less interesting, but it's definitely worth a watch for the earlier scenes. Some of the plot elements are not properly explained and the ending is a little weak, but not bad as a whole.