I am Legend : Movie Review

"My name is Robert Neville. I am a survivor living in New York City.
I am broadcasting on all AM frequencies.

I will be at the South Street Seaport everyday at mid-day, when the sun is highest in the sky.
If you are out there... if anyone is out there... I can provide food, I can provide shelter, I can provide security. If there's anybody out there... anybody... please. You are not alone. "

-Robert Neville

But, he knew he was. And he knew all others were infected by the deadly virus. He was at ground zero, at his place, and he took stand to change it all. To bring the world out of this horror of darkness, he dedicated all his efforts. It is the story of a scientist, a human, a planet and a nightmare.

The Inspiration

The movie I am Legend has been inspired by the sci-fi horror novel "I am Legend" by Richard Matherson. Though it deviates a lot from the original story, in parts it tells the director's interpretation of the spirit of the novel. The original novel was set in times between 1976 and 1979, while the movie is set in times between 2009-2012 and hence it has some obvious changes in the story.

The movie

The story starts with a telivision interview of Dr. Krippin (Emma Thompson), the founder of Krippin Virus (KV), mutant of measeles virus, that can cure cancer.

And then the story cuts to an empty new york city, 3 years later in 2012, with no one in sight, as a ford mustang is the only tiny dot seen as moving from the sky.

It is driven by the only man who has survived an apocalypse, scientist Robert Neville (Will Smith) , along with his dog, Samantha "Sam". As they drive past the empty new york city, you see deers and lions who have occupied the place with no trace of any human existence. He lives in a city of dead. The empty city in the bright light looks as scary as the darkness of night on the city.

The KV struck a terror by infecting all the humans and mutating them in to mutants, that are hyper agressive and have killing insticts. They feed on others, as they develop vampirish symptoms. The whole background to this empty city could be summarized in a dialogue where the frustrated protagonist says :

" Six billion people on Earth when the infection hit.
KV had a ninety-percent kill rate, that's five point four billion people dead.
Crashed and bled out. Dead. Less than one-percent immunity.
That left twelve million healthy people, like you, me, and Ethan.
The other five hundred and eighty-eight million turned into your dark seekers,
and then they got hungry and they killed and fed on everybody.
Everybody! Every *single* person that you or I has ever known is dead! Dead."

As the movie moves on you see Neville and samantha moving across the city everyday, hunting, finding darkseekers whom they can treat by the cure that Neville is trying to search. The movie traces their daily life, in day they live their normal life and nights they shut themselves in their building to survive. It is the story of survival.

Empty city leaves a very strong impression on your mind as you feel that all is lost. Neville goes to the South street seaport every noon, wishing someone would come to him, someone who is alive and has heard his message. A recorded news channel going day after day, Movies on DVD every day with no one to talk to, making food getting the vegetables that has now grown in the city, hunting, music, talks with Samantha, evening, shielding, surviving is his routine. Its the monotony of this empty life that catches the viewer and makes him believe in it. He saves samantha and himself from dark seekers every day. Samantha is the only friend he has, the only friend who he has had after death of his wife and daughter during evacuation. It is the story of friendship.

Meanwhile Neville keeps on experimenting with the darkseekers in his laboratary to find medicine to the cure. The rats, the dark seekers all keep on dying as he fails again and again.

One day as Neville sees a person on road- is it a manequinn, like the ones he keeps on seeing in DVD stores or is he real, he gets scared and finds that it was not real. Will smith is extraordinary in this scene, and so is the dog. Disbelief is all you see in their eyes.But that gets him in a trap as he is caught, and loses consciousness. By the time of dusk, when the mutated dogs can move out but not the mutated humans, he regains conciousness, and fids himself and sam facing the mutated dogs, whom he has to kill, they bite him, they bite sam. (by now through various posters in the movie you realize that dogs can move out at dusk and canine are not immune to virus through contact while humans are). Both of them are badly injured.

Next i think comes another moving scene of the movie, where he finds that Sam has got infacted with the virus, and he has no option but to kill her. The eyes are moist, the hands tighten around the creature's neck and the body, out of a determination to survive kills, kills the only friend it ever had, all this time. He goes to the mannequins in the DVD stores and begs them to wish him hello, he has lost his friend. It is the story of loss.

He then tries to kill himself by running his SUV out in the night, and hoping to run it over some infected. But the plan fails and number of "infected" runs his vehicle down. Suddenly its all dark.

Next day he is on his bed, lying with his wounds stiched and with a noise from the kitchen. Someone saved him. That someone is a human. A female and a child. Appearance of Anna and Ethan on screen comes with equal disbelief to bothe Neville and the viewer. Looking at humans after all those years for Neville, was so unhuman. "Everyone is dead". Will Smith acts fabulously as disbelief grips him again. Anna and Ethan bring him back the memory of his family, memory of his breed, memory of human beings. He later tries to save the two from the Infected .

Anna and Neville's discussion are the gist of movie where you realize that all this has made him an atheist. He doesnot believe in god anymore. Anna does. This was a very thoughtful scene. I feel if Neville had believed in god he might not have been as strong as he had been. He believed in himself and knew that there will be no one else who can save him.

The Final Attack ..

Infected finds out his abode and attacks in full force to kill the three. While saving Anna and Ethan, Neville discovers that he has found the cure of the disease, which he wants to sent back through the vial of blood given to Anna and Ethan.

The last scene i feel, was the best part of the movie. Here was a scientist who strived against all odds, to discover a cure to a disease that lead the mankind to extinction. A discovery too late, but too important. He stands there as hundreds of Infected humans attack him, to kill him, he knows they are sick, he knows he can cure them all, but they, they dont think they are not humans. He has the medicine to cure them but he cannot do that with such a lot of people around, and he has to kill them along with himself. Beautiful ending to the story. Epilogue shows Anna finding the human colony, bringing the cure to them. "Robert Neville strived all his life to save mankind. This is his legend."

Deviations from the actual plot of the novel- a criticism

The movie is very different from the novel it is inspired from. This has both good and bad effect on the movie :

Good ones are the empty scenes of New York, original movie there were people who were not infected, this did not show any of it. This contributed to the emptiness, scariness and impactful loneliness of the first half. The end too was not as per the novel, but was good in some ways. Moreover the novel having been written in 1954 was outdated and needed a new look.

But the bad ones are :

• Not detailing how the relationship between sam and Neville developed which was a big part of the original novel
  
• Making vampires out of the infected humans. The book talks of human-like infected peopele, whom you cannot differentiate in the day time from sleeping people. This has made this beautiful story look like
  
• Bringing a child Ethan into the story did not add any substantial impact to the story.
  
• The whole view of the infected humans, who considers Neville to be a monster for obvious reasons and the way they react to it was eliminated from the movie. This I think was the biggest disappointment in the movie. Its the dawn of new society, a process of evolution / devolution that has shaped new societies over ages, and this angle is completely eliminated to keep the human colony alive.


• You can check Richard Matheson's views on adaptation of his story in to movies at http://www.iamlegendarchive.com/matheson.html. He too had mentioned that the movie is no more his story
  

Acting

Its a Will Smith movie, and he delivers, one of his best performances till date where he uses silence, emotions, eyes, body language everything look so very befitting. Its out and out his movie. As far as other actors are concerned... umm... where there any? :)

Abbey, the German Shepherd Dog, shines for her acting abilities in the movie.

Everyone else, Alice Braga (Anna), Charlie Tahan (Ethan), Robert's wife Zoe (Sali Richardson), Marley (Willow smith, will smith's daughter debuts with this movie) are all stictly ok, but they dont have much to do in the movie, so strictly ok is ok.

Direction and the Technical team

Well I think the kind of delay and issues that this film has faced befoe being made, was something that could have disheartened any director by giving his 100%. I think Francis Lawrence did a wonderful job in this context. He has added a lot to the film. Its had been a long journey for him from shooting music video with JLO to Constantine to I am legend

But I have one complain, the movie's first part had to be empty, it had to show the silence and emptiness of the city that has turned in to a jungle. The novel too dwells more in looking at the city from eyes of Neville, but the film does not. If there would have been shots where the camera shows us what the eyes of Neville did, in place of showing him in person, the emptiness would have been far stronger.

I think guys who actually messed things up where the one who started the movie without a completed script and the one who wrote the screenplay (Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman), at times in the movie they have made a good plot look like a horror flick. This could have been done a lot better.

A bigger mistake I feel by both directors and writers were the things that they did not do. The movie did not have multiple planes on which it could work. It was made rather simplistically. There could have been layers, philosophical, pschological, about formation of a society, about psychology of solitary confinements, about philosophy of god and his purpose, about being human, which they have missed by a mile.

The production design, especially the posters that you keep seeing all across New York in the movie, were a work of art. Great eye for detail.

A special mention needs to be given to the special effects of the movie. At times they were bad, not because they were badly created but because the idea was to saw the dark seekers like vampires, which was a mistake in my view. But they did wonderful work in the first half. Creating an empty city where lions and deers roam around out of the bustling New York city must have been a daunting task.

Music by James Howard, who has many other hits like King kong and blood diamond to his names has given a good score. Editing has been very good, barring some scenes that were very dark.

On the whole a well made film based on a loopholed writing, which is acted fabulously ends up getting just a 2.5*. This could have been far far better. Infact I think we missed a Matrix here.