Not up to Will Smith's usual standard
You have to like Will Smith. How do you not like him? He's one of the best leading men in Hollywood today. So I took a chance with "I am Legend", a sci-fi apocalyptic thriller that is set in New York in the near future after a virus has either killed or turned into zombie monsters most of humanity. Will Smith and his dog are hanging out in Manhattan, trying to survive and find a cure for the virus.

It's a great premise, and it is fun to think of all the things you could do if you just had an empty city all to yourself. But I didn't care for it. It has too many horror elements to be really enjoyable. Unless you like that kind of thing, it is jarring to constantly be going from soft and quiet sequences to loud and crazy scenes. And Will Smith is at his best when he is interacting with other characters. Tom Hanks managed to pull off "Cast Away" talking to a volleyball, but it gets old having

Cheesy Ending - Real Cop-out
Pretty good adaptation of the novel by Richard Matheson, modernized and great idea to set it in NYC. And the creatures were great. But then the ending came, and I wanted to .....Hollywood bs. Stick to the novel for a change.

DEATHDAY BY E. BRUCE IS BETTER!
Deathday by Eugene Bruce would be better! Maybe, maybe not, who knows - but being an impoverished author i won't apologise for shamelessly promoting my debut novel Deathday by Eugene Bruce - I'd very much appreciate you checking it out that's DEATHDAY by EUGENE BRUCE - I love you America!

I loved the alternate version of the film!
The movie, I Am Legend starring Will Smith, is based somewhat loosely on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel of the same name. Now, most people don't know who Richard Matheson is, but this is the writer who influenced both Stephen King and Dean Koontz where they were teenagers, not to mention thousands of other kids, myself included. This was the man who wrote some of the most famous Twilight Zone episodes of the sixties, especially Nightmare at Thirty Thousand Feet. This is the author of the famous horror novel, Hell House, which was also turned into a film. Flipping the coin over, Matheson is author of the famous romance novel, Bid Time Return, and this was also turned into a major motion picture, though most people know it as Somewhere In Time. There's also the novel and movie, What Dreams May Come. Richard Matheson is therefore one of the greatest writers of the last half of the Twentieth Century. Without him, we might not have had Stephen King and Dean Koontz writing such brilliant books.

I Am Legend with Will Smith is the third adaptation of Matheson's novel, and Mr. Smith does a truly excellent job of portraying the lead character Robert Neville, capturing his aloneness and near insanity at being quite possibly the only human being alive. Neville was the military doctor experimenting with new drugs and viruses in the hope of finding a cure for cancer. What was discovered, however, wiped out most of the human population, while changing those still alive into flesh-eating zombies, or vampires, that move at a tremendous speed and seemed to be filled with an incurable amount of rage and violence. Because the creatures can't survive in the sunlight, Neville has control of the day when he and his German Shepard go out hunting for food and raiding the nearby DVD store. Neville is also still searching for a vaccine that will cure the symptoms of the virus. He uses zombies that he's captured, and the testing usually results in their deaths. The night, however, is totally controlled by the creatures, and Neville must always be home by dark in order to barricade himself inside his Washington Square apartment with its reinforced doors and window shutters. In time a confrontation is inevitable between Neville and the creatures, and this in turn eventually escalates into a full-blown battle at between life and death at the end.

I had mixed feeling about the movie when I first saw it at the theater. When the Two-Disc Special Edition came out, I found myself enjoying the longer alternate version with a different ending. I think the director, Francis Lawrence, and the Special Effects people did a fabulous job of creating New York City a few years down the road after the plague has done its nasty work, showing the desolate streets with non-moving cars and trash lining the curbs and weeds growing out of the pavement. And, Will Smith, plays perfectly to this setting, creating a character that is near the end of his rope and talks to mannequins in the DVD store as a way of keeping himself from going crazy, then goes berserk when one of the mannequins shows up in a different location. Unlike a lot of viewers, I loved the creatures. The scene where Smith has to go into the basement of a bank to find his dog and runs into a group of them standing together in a group had me dropping popcorn all over my lap. I felt myself in the darkness with him as well as the strong fear that he was experiencing. This is definitely one of the best horror scenes done in the last few years.

I believe the Two-Disc Special Edition with a longer version of the film and an alternate ending is the way to go. I do have to say that other than a different version of the movie, there isn't much else offered that I cared about. The makers of the DVD set could've done a feature on the long history of I Am Legend with an in-depth interview from Richard Matheson and a more detailed look at the making of the film. That will probably come in a later edition somewhere down the road. Anyway, this is a good, fun movie with some superb acting by Will Smith.

Solid; Stunning; Real
Based on the book by Richard Matheson, I Am Legend is the story of Robert Neville (Will Smith), sole survivor of a plague that, originally, was supposed to be a miracle cure for cancer three years before. Instead, most of the world died at the hands of the plague. Others mutated into bloodthirsty vampiric creatures; only a small percentage of humankind remained immune to the disease.

All alone in New York, virologist Neville tries to find a cure and "fix" the problem that stole the lives of everyone he knew and everyone he loved, while also trying to survive in a city infested with the infected and ferocious monsters.

Straight from the start you know you're in for a ride.

An empty city, overgrown and broken down.

A lone guy speeding through the streets in a fancy car, weapon at his side.

Animals prowling the streets, free of their cages.

The lock up.

The screams.

The howls.

Yeah, good stuff.

The intense feeling of atmosphere was what drew me into this flick. Immediately isolation sets in right from the first frame as we see Neville trying to maintain a normal life in a dead city (renting movies, talking to mannequins, keeping a routine), his eyes washed with pain yet underscored with determination to keep on going. This is a one-man show and I haven't seen it done so well since Cast Away (one of my favorite movies) years and years ago.

No complaints about Will Smith here and he's done a good job over his career to make you forget about the loud-mouthed homeboy he played in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Plus, did you see the guy in this film? He's ripped! Shredded. But, I guess, you'd have to be if you lived a world where vampire-zombie-human things prowled the streets and your life could be in jeopardy at the drop of a hat if you weren't too careful.

Which brings me to the monsters in question. Overall, well done. Creepy skin, no hair, loud growls, amazing agility and intensely vicious. Yeah, killer. Obviously they were CGI so they did look a tad rubbery and there were a few moments where it felt I was looking at a cartoon. Thankfully, those moments happened so fast and the action was so intense that I quickly forgot my quibble and moved on.

My only thing was the ending. Now, I never read the book so I can't compare, but it ended too abruptly and really lost its post-apocalyptic feel in the last five minutes or so. Sort of a Disney ending, which didn't fit in with what was a gloomy story up until that point.

Regardless, if someone asked me what I thought of this film, I'd tell them to go see it.

It's that good.