Review : I am Legend

Despite harsh criticism from my peers regarding this movie, I insisted on going ahead to watch it anyway today . If only for one reason, it’s Will Smith. I have never missed any of his movies and I don’t intend to start now. Yes I admit, I have been a fan of this great man since his Fresh Prince of Bel Air days and it made me proud to see his accomplishments throughout the years, and secondly it’s a science fiction movie. Enough said. I’m sold!

With no knowledge about the book it was based on, I went to see the movie with no expectations, except a few which I will divulge later.

The story begins with a virus which has been genetically engineered by scientists as the cure for cancer and also the destruction of mankind. It centre’s around an ex-navy medical officer Lieutenant Robert Neville (played by Will Smith), which is immune to this ‘virus’ and to his knowledge, he is the last remaining person on earth.

For one thing, I need to give kudos to the graphics team of this movie for the amazing ‘realness’ of an empty New York city which also sent a chill down my spine. Being an ardent sci-fi fan, I could understand the fact that this is a ‘possible’ scenario, the whole wipe-out of the human race plot (which also been played in other numerous other sci-fi movies) But for some reason I never get tired of this plot. Probably because that is much possibility in that fact, and it might even happen overnight. It doesn’t necessarily need to be caused by an air-borne virus, but so many other possibilities, climate, tsunamis, nuclear war, earthquakes, the list goes on. It is a scenario every human need to be aware of.

Ok back to the movie, as Dr Robert Neville aptly puts it, there is only 5 billion people left on the planet but 588million turn into these night creatures which hunts the rest of the human population. Hence why he is the last remaining man (and dog) on earth, and as the movie progressed there were a few points I noted which could have been played out much more interestingly. Due to the lack of human interaction, we are pretty much left with only Will Smith for much of this movie in the beginning, I thought the movie could have done a little more with the backstory or elongating the flashbacks so we could have a deeper understanding of what actually happened. Instead we needed to draw our own weird conclusions. I was left questioning, so it’s a virus, which turns these people cancer-free, and suddenly they turn into morbid flesh eating zombies? Ermm….?? What's missing here?

Also, Will Smith is known to be a smart- ass wise cracker, and he does deliver his straight up humor in wonderful anecdotes, but I really wished he had more lines, even if it’s only talking to himself in his lab, or his dog, and wished he explained things that he does in detail, and why the tests he’s doing are failing. (Yeah I am that nerdy). Nevertheless I felt that Will Smith did manage to portray a tough but deeply psychologically wounded human being, with only his background in military to keep him grounded perhaps,(although he did lose his marbles when the unexpected happened)

Furthermore, I understood the fact that he is a scientist, but I don’t know what is his significance to this ‘virus ‘ research, who is he actually? Why did he feel it’s his ‘ground zero’? What did he do to cause any of this? Also I wished they had shown not just New York city, but other parts of the world as well because I was left wondering, is everyone else still alive across the bridge?

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, it was an emotional rollercoaster and the directors did manage to convey the horror of a person being ‘hunted’, I was truly terrified and almost screamed in some scenes , but without much backstory I did feel like I was a spectator to a ‘discovery channel’ styled documentary in some parts of the movie, but also ironically adds a lot of realism into it, lastly as a sci-fi fan (and also I’m biased when it comes to Will Smith) I give it a 7 out of 10, and I’m definitely going to read the book. ;P