KEY POINTS:
Herald Rating: * *
Cast: Will Smith
Director: Francis Lawrence
Rating: M, violence & horror
Running time: 100 mins
Screening: SkyCity, Hoyts, Berkeley
Verdict: Smith's sci-fi solo act starts off smart, ends up stupid
If there's ever been a case of less is truly more in a Will Smith actionfest - films not usually notable for their minimalism - then I Am Legend is it.
When it's only Smith, his dog and a desolated New York, I Am Legend is spookily effective. Making the sleepless Times Square look like Aotea Square is quite an achievement. And the opening parts of the film, flashing back to the epidemic and ensuing panic which has left Smith's military scientist Robert Neville the only living boy in New York, all inspire hope of something good to come.
But soon there are signs I Am Legend's sense of post-apocalyptic atmosphere is really all it has going for it. Then again so did MTV-graduate director Lawrence's last film, Constantine.
Thematically, its story - based, as two others have been, on Richard Matheson's classic 1954 sci-fi novel - of mankind virtually swept away by a supervirus hasn't much contemporary resonance. The script has been kicking around since the Arnie days and feels suitably dated.
Lawrence sure has his volume knob turned way up for a movie about one man - stupidly, one of the biggest make-you-jump moments comes when he closes simply a window shutter - and the tone control is all over the place.
That's true of Smith's solo act too. It's as if he's delivering it as a scene by scene medley - here's Neville the survivalist hunter; here's Neville the lonely madman talking to shop dummies he's set up for company in his local DVD store; here's Neville the devoted scientist still trying to find a cure for what killed everybody; here's Neville the Bob Marley-lovin' doting dog owner.
Smith may the only guy in the main part of the movie but there sure are a lot of him. It's hard to know which one to believe but Smith being the engaging star he is - heck this guy steals scenes from people who aren't even there - at least holds our interest.
He'd better. Because what he's up against can sure look crummy. It's ironic perhaps that I Am Legend's greatest computer trickery is taking stuff out of the city.
For when it puts stuff back in - deers, lions, flesh-eating vampire zombies, that sort of thing - it all goes a bit videogame.
Basically the same virus which wiped out everyone turned a few into flesh-eating vampire zombies or Dark Seekers, so called for their nocturnal tendencies (not their tendency to hum Morningtown Ride before sunrise). Which means Neville must batten his hatches every night and can't venture into Manhattan's darker corners. Though when he does, as in one early terrific horror sequence it's one part of the film that works for its blind adrenalin rush.
But out of the dark the zombie guys are a digital downgrade doing all the usual mad zombie things, except they all seem to have been practitioners of that wall-leaping parkour thing in their former lives.
What has turned the zombies into spider-men is not the only question you end up pondering during this film. Yes, it would be picky to wonder just how Neville keeps his house and lab going plumbing and electricity-wise, let alone the dietary implications.
But the most questionable aspect of I Am Legend is its ending. It's as if having been a fairly rollicking if flawed sci-fi zombiefest leading up to a big showdown, it suddenly slaps on the wettest of philosophical codas to get the whole thing over with. So don't worry, that groaning you'll hear as the end credits roll isn't the zombies ... .
