December 14, 2007
The idea of one day being “the last man on earth” holds a dark and undeniable appeal. Perhaps it has something to do with the thought of all the women who would have to reconsider their declaration that they wouldn’t date you, even if you were just that – living up to that promise when all other male options have succumbed to some horrible plague, might be more difficult than they imagine (provided we’re talking about a gender-selective purging). Or maybe it’s the thought of having your surroundings open to you like some sort of giant abandoned amusement park. Throngs of sweating fellow tourists and their screaming kids would be a thing of the past, and you’d never be forced to pony up for an exorbitant park-entrance fee again (or pull out your work permit and explain to a guard that you’re due the local price). It’s here, in this realm of fancy, that “I Am Legend”, the blockbuster film that set a box-office record for ticket sales in the US in December, works best.
The film opens with Will Smith, as Dr. Robert Neville, zipping around in a sports car through a post-apocalyptic New York, so familiar to those who have been there or those who know it through films, but one that has gone to seed, with weeds breaking through the pavement, and deer running around – they are highly motivated to run, both because of the lions on the loose throughout the city and Dr. Neville, who hunts them on Park Avenue (which is a bit strange: why, with his endless supply of canned food, would he bother?).
Still, it’s fun to watch, and exhilarating too to think of the possibilities – knocking golf balls from the deck of the aircraft carrier Intrepid, while your German Shepherd stands sentry looks like a lot of fun, though Neville’s imagination has its limits: at one point it is revealed that he has devoted a significant portion of his time in solitude to memorizing the dialogue of the kid’s movie “Shrek” line-by-line. Well, nowhere is it written that the last man on earth has to be cool. The fun and imagination of the first part of the film is outdone by the rest of it. Without going into too much detail, Neville faces a crisis at one point that is resolved in a way that wholly contradicts the rules already established by the film.
Other reviews have pointed out logical faults in this one, but there is perhaps no greater one than seeing all bridges to Manhattan blown up and then having a key plot point rest on the absolute need for that not to have happened. There are hints, here and there, in the fun of the first act, of the sorry third act that is to come. The opening scene is the most revealing of all. Emma Thompson, in a cameo as a scientist, is being interviewed after the good news that she has just cured cancer. It is her cure for cancer that mutates into this terrible plague that turns humans into obvious CGI-generated monsters (film critic Roger Ebert made the very sound point “How, I always wonder, do human beings in all their infinite shapes and sizes mutate into identical pale zombies with infinite speed and strength?”) that come out only at night for psychotic violence and destruction.
Yes, this is the first movie I’ve seen where the cure for cancer is the enemy. That little tidbit and a few others provide hints of what is to come, but nothing that fully prepares the viewer for the movie’s conclusion. Again, without spoiling it (though is there fault to be found in spoiling a terrible ending?), the movie’s theme, raised by the Emma Thompson character’s careless meddling on behalf of science reaches a “faith-based” conclusion, and a closing scene that will make you cringe.
It’s a disappointment because up until it went down that road, it was a fun movie and certainly far better than the most recent attempt to bring Richard Matheson’s novel “I Am Legend” to the big screen, Charlton Heston’s “The Omega Man”, which has aged so terribly that it can only be enjoyed as camp. That this movie was such a major draw in the US hopefully points to Will Smith’s star power – after all he did draw people in droves to see the terrible “Bad Boys” pictures – and not the public embracing its overall prehistoric, anti-science theme. Now that would be a cause for concern.
– Noel, Bangkok
