Movie Review: I am Legend

I caught I Am Legend last night with the wife and a group of friends. The movie is about the not too distant future in which a scientist has genetically altered a virus as a cure for cancer. Naturally, the virus mutates and starts turning people into some sort of zombie vampire thing that only comes out at night. Dr. Robert Neville (played by Will Smith) is the last living person (who isn't a zombie) left in New York City and is trying to come up with a cure for this virus. Of course, Neville is immune to the virus so he's using his own blood as a base for his vaccine.

Once you get away from the zombie movie cliche, you get a pretty decent movie reminiscent of 1971's The Omega Man, in fact... I Am Legend is a remake of The Omega Man, although I believe the latter was a bit more developed, plus it had Charlton Heston playing the part of Robert Neville.

From a technical standpoint I Am Legend is a decent movie. The CGI flows pretty seamlessly with the film with a few minor exceptions. The director did a fabulous job of depicting a dilapitated New York after three years of not having any sort of street maintenance done.

Will Smith usually gives an excellent performance, and does not dissapoint in this film. He really captures the emotion of a man who has quite literally lost everything.

All that said, what we have in this movie is not much more than yet another zombie flick. It is an exercise in human pain and suffering, and has plenty of it to go around. The ending is dissapointing at best and leaves the audience feeling cheated.

Overall I'd have to say that this movie is worth seeing, but catch a matinee or wait for it to come out on DVD, and definitely don't pay the extra money to see it in an IMAX theatre. The movie just doesn't lend itself to the IMAX format well and that just added to the cheated feeling I had comimg out of it. It didn't feel like the extra screen size added anything to the movie other than the screen was really big. I could have seen it on a standard sized screen and been fine. My feelings toward the movie would have been the same, but I wouldn't have come out of it wondering why on earth I had wasted an extra $4 on the price of admission for it.

My rating: See it on DVD.