I Am Legend [Blu-ray]

A very entertaining film... although, like most films it has its flaws, but the great ride makes up for it. Looks AMAZING on Blu ray. The detail is stunning! By far the best looking Blu Ray example in my collection.

It's always a risk reviewing films that were based on books. Especially the ones that have a huge fan base that the fans really really love. Now, I never read I am legend but Will Smith is an amazing actor and one of the best, so I had to see this. I Am Legend is very simple, it almost even reminds you of Cast Away though there're more people or should I say creatures in this film.

Robert Neville is a Virologist Lieutenant Colonel for the U.S. Army. In an early scene in the film you see Neville rushing his family into a car while the rest of N.Y. is running scared in a panic. While Neville is explaining to his wife and real life daughter Marley what is going on, a sort of zombie looking creature hits their car. It turns out that there has been an outbreak spread of a very lethal virus. Then you come to find out that Neville is the last healthy person in New York City and maybe even the world. He may be the last person but he is surely not alone.

First, I have no idea how Tom Hanks won for Cast Away and Smith doesn't receive anything. I say this because Will Smith just killed this role and if you don't believe me then just check it out. He is in the film by himself for most of its time but he your attention is never somewhere else. He honestly had me excited to see what would happen next. He even shows how hard it is to be by yourself for so long by making his dog his best friend and talking to a mannequin at a local video store. His performance was flawless without a doubt. Without him, I don't see or think anyone else could have possibly played this role as well as him.

I thought that the creatures were very cool, not extremely scary but cool. I think the creatures could shock a few but not many but at the same time they create great suspense. You never really know what they're going to do, I loved that these things were also intelligent. The creature intelligence almost remind you of the zombies from George A. Romero's Land of the Dead. I thought I Am Legend was a great movie, some may like it and some may not. I know some people that saw the preview and thought that the movie was a horror but trust me its not. You should totally check it out especially if you like Will Smith.

Will Smith again proves why he is the biggest actor in Hollywood right now. His acting in Legend is the best he's done so far, and makes an already great concept better. The extra features are good, and the animated shorts especially are just great. The alternate ending, though worth it, is a little is iffy to me. I think this movie is worth the price. Oh, and it looks good too.

This movie was great in its own context. It started out with, what I'll admit, were some slightly cheesy computer imagery of a desolate downtown NYC with Will Smith chasing a herd of deer through the abandoned streets. The CGI hemocytes (vampire people), were well done, but I'll agree with a few other reviewers that they could have been done differently and it would have had a greater effect. (without spoiling anything) Robert Neville is a colonel in the army who was charged with extinguishing the great viral outbreak that destroyed Earth's population. He decides to stay at what he calls "ground zero", b/c he truly believes that he can "fix this". In its own context, this is a very good movie, and definitely worth watching.

I must admit that I came into my viewing of "I Am Legend at a disadvantage. First, I haven't read the book upon which it was based (something I hope to correct soon). In addition, I'd heard much about the movie, both how brilliant Will Smith was in the role that had him alone on the screen for a significant portion of the movie, and also how the movie supposedly degrades in the last third. So when I finally got to see the movie last night, I was entirely unsure what to expect.

Having now seen "I Am Legend," I believe that the movie will go down as one of the classics in science fiction cinema. The cinematography is outstanding. When you see the epic shots of New York having been reclaimed by the wilderness, now the domain for the likes of lions and deer, the streets either clogged with deserted cars or choked by vegetation, you really believe that you are in the midst of the greatest tragedy of our modern times. The story is masterfully told in such a way that rather than being forced through a long expositional section providing the back story, or subjected to drawn out flashbacks that interrupt the forward momentum, the past is revealed in brief flashbacks, video clips that Smith's character, Robert Neville, constantly plays on his television, and other subtle but prevalent clues like photographs and newspaper clippings that are cleverly positioned within various scenes throughout early parts of the movie. This film, unlike many others these days, doesn't operate under the assumption that its audience is fairly clueless. It respects its audience, and I very much respect the film for that.

Both Will Smith and his canine companion quickly become beloved friends whom you care for, which makes the twists and turns that occur later on all the more moving. When the enormity of the very fact that, in Neville's mind, he is the only living human left on the earth (besides the vampire-like creatures who used to be humans) hits you, you too begin to feel the weight of his loneliness and can then understand why he is in many ways slowly going insane. If not for the daily ritual that he's structured his life around, one gets the feeling that this man would have ended his own life long before. And there's something haunting about the base story here, that some tragic event could in fact leave a once life-filled metropolis like New York a cold, empty monument to a once mighty race of beings. Could our own quest for advancement one day be our undoing?

While I must admit that the movie does seem to rush toward the ending, with the climatic moments seeming to come too soon after a major plot twist changes Neville's entire world view, I don't have a problem with the way the story ends. I suppose the ending is more "Hollywood" and less "deep" than I assume that the book is, but the ending in itself is very well done, and given the ordeal that this character has gone through, is one that works well for me. I just wish more time had been spent getting us to the ending because what this movie had, which far too few movies in this genre have today, is a solid plot that fed both the appetite of the action junkie and the person who prefers a great story. Another minor fault I must hold against the film is the vampire creatures, who would have been far more compelling if they were played by real people rather than CGI. The only CGI character that has yet to truly come alive within a real world setting is Gollum from The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and that character was built upon the brilliant acting of Andy Serkis.

"I Am Legend" isn't perfect, and the fact that it came so close is what's most frustrating to me as a fan of both Will Smith and this genre of film, but what it does provide, it does so very well. This is a fun, thought-provoking film that years from now will be one of Smith's most lauded performances. I highly recommend it to everyone.

- Gregory Bernard Banks, author, reader, reviewer