I Am Legend23 Dec 2007
It isn’t often you see a movie and feel fundamentally changed afterwards. But that’s what I feel after watching I Am Legend with Will Smith yesterday. Don’t worry, there are no plot spoilers here.
- I’ll never listen to Bob Marley the same again. The legendary Legend tune “One Love” was played numerous times during the movie, but in one scene Will Smith’s character sings it, in a scene which ripped my heart out and stomped it flat. I still can’t get over that scene.
- If you don’t like movies that can depress you, I recommend you stay away from this one, as great as it is. It is moving. Stirring. All those glossy words reviewers use to describe movies fit this one, but with I Am Legend, they resound truth in its essence. This movie is gripping.
- The true horror of this movie has nothing to do with the mutated humans. It has everything to do with Will Smith’s character, Robert Neville, and his tormented soul. There’s more angst in that heart of his than, thankfully, most people will ever know. Of course, you don’t know this at the beginning, you only know he’s a survivor of some kind of apocalyptic scourge. From there, you learn in blips how truly bad things really are, and then they get worse.
I won’t give anything away other than to say this movie affected me more than almost any other movie ever has. And not in good ways. But don’t take this to mean that I hated the movie. No, I loved it, even though I was saddened by it beyond expression. It’s nothing like the sappy Armageddon, with scenes designed to make you cry by some great heroic feat at the end of a life, no, it was much, much more than that. This movie moves with a tortured soul of its own, and Will Smith’s marvelous performance gives that soul the voice it needs.
4 Responses to “I Am Legend”
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now, I am definitely going to watch this film. Just to see why you described Will Smith’s character to have an angst-filled soul. Will Smith should pay you for that review. Definitely a great one.
When I saw the poster back in the fall I thought, “Cool, I really hope they make it like Matheson’s novel this time.” And then I found out it was more of a remake of “The Omega Man.” Sigh.
But, yeah, in the book there’s so much that goes on that he glosses by quickly that just makes Neville’s life so incredibly terrible, that when the dog comes out you feel how amazing it is. Hopefully they kept that his arch-nemesis was his former close co-worker/neighbor. And the end of the book was just so great and dark that I can see why even in a depressing movie they didn’t want to make it that way.
Thanks bukopie! You may be troubled afterward (I was), but you won’t be disappointed.
Steve: To my great shame, I have not read the book (insert big giant YET here). I can tell you that there is a specific nemesis in the movie, although he wasn’t named and it didn’t specify any relationship between him and Neville. But the dog plays a huge role in this adaptation, much larger than I believe the book did (at least so far as I’ve gathered from the book in reading reviews and whatnot). The dog is the embodiment of many things for Neville… and I should say no more. I’m paying a lot more attention to my dog lately, though.