I Am Legend

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Color me impressed, here. Francis Lawrence and Will Smith I imagine are patting themselves on the back somewhere, because they kind of pulled a fast one. Judging by the way this one's been marketed, I think the studio was expecting another blockbuster-y, underhand pitch, action and effects extravaganza a la Men in Black or I, Robot. Instead, what we got here is a rather effective, thoughtful sci-fi movie slash character study that genuinely tries to imagine what it must feel like to be the last man alive.

Not that this movie is high art, or perfect, or completely lacking in plot holes. But I didn't give a shit about that... there's a lot to love here, especially Will Smith's performance. There's some real creativity here, and some real poignancy. And I dig that his character is straddling a fine line between willful delusion and insanity. Like, you've seen in the trailers that he has a bunch of mannequins set up inside a video store, and he pretends they are his friends. What's even better, though, is the way he has a female mannequin set up looking at the adult section. And then he starts to grow a crush on her, and has conversations with his dog about whether or not he should ask her out.

Then, later, in a moment of desperation, he begs the mannequin to speak to him. I know that sounds stupid, and it probably should be, but Smith really makes the scene heartbreaking. I loved it.

There's more exciting shit, too, especially when one of the mannequins shows up somewhere it shouldn't be. Unless... is it possible that it's somehow alive? Smith does a good job of freaking out here, not sure what is going on or if he can trust it.

There are two pretty effective action/suspense scenes. One where Smith investigates a dark building that is creepy. And another where he slowly tries to crawl away from danger with a bad leg wound. (A touch I like here is that he gets stabbed in the leg, and leaves the knife in. The set up the typical action movie scene where he tries to man up and pull it out, only here is just can't quite work up the nerve. Good detail; throws in a nice human touch in the middle of a set piece). Sadly, the bigger action scenes are a little bland. I blame this mostly on the stupid, fake looking CGI-zombie vampires.

Ha. I know. Those things are the main villains of the movie. You would think their stupidness would be a big deal. It's not, though. So much of the rest of the movie is good, that I scarcely gave a shit about how fake they look.

I am one of the few dudes who liked Lawrence's Constantine, at least on a visual level. And he makes this one look good too, with the exception of the zombies. So I'm looking forward to his next.

There is one touch here, though, that makes me wonder. Constantine, obvious, has a religious slant to the story. Now here, in I Am Legend, out of nowhere, in the last 15 minutes or so, it suddenly gets all Jesus-y. Which I guess is fine, I don't mind movies having a religious message. But it comes out of left field, and isn't at all set up by anything that happens earlier.

And actually, it's worse than that. It steals it's ending from another genre movie that was otherwise really good but then, to quote Charlie Wilson, fucked up the endgame. A movie also with strong character work and visual style. A movie where the lead actor also made some comments that offended some Jewish folks.

That's right. I'm talking about Signs. I Am Legend has the exact same ending as Signs. No, not the part about the water killing aliens. The part about God having a master plan that makes no sense and is corny.

Still, I liked this movie overall. Let's not let a lame ending spoil the whole experience.

One thing that could have made it better: Will Smith's character should have been named Irving Michael Legend. and then when you're walking home you realize that his name would be I. M. Legend. That would have been awesome.