I Am Disappointed

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!





Will Smith is an amazing actor. He really is.
I Am Legend is the third film adaptation of I Am Legend, Matheson's awesome and claustrophobic novel about the last known survivor of a viral pandemic. In the past, Robert Neville has been played by Charlton 'I love guns' Heston. Will Smith is better. I love the Hestonator, but he manages to completely withdraw any emotion from the role of Neville, and inserts communist propaganda and vampire hatred into it. Will Smith, on the other hand, keeps the role rather intense.

The film is good for an hour. It's not quite the car chases and vampire-type creature fight onslaught I expected, it focusses a lot more on Will Smith's struggle to avoid insanity with the help of his dog, Samantha. Sadly, the third act is appalling. Apparently the DVD alternate ending is favoured by critics, which makes you wonder why the studio didn't have it as the ending. Not Hollywood enough, possibly? It was more similar to the ending in the book, in that the 'infected' one is actually Neville himself, and his immunity makes him stand out more than the monsters that regular humans have become. But then again, Neville does really need to die, which happens in Hollywood but not in DVD-land. But since this ending didn't happen, with love and humanity conquering their hatred, as opposed to hand grenades, I got incredibly bored.

The one massive flaw with the film is editing. Did they watch it before it was released? There is one scene on the pier when Will Smith is attacking some monsters and it shows the same shot twice, once out of chronological sense and once at the correct time. RIDICULOUS! Also, they really didn't try hard enough with continuity errors, when Neville and his dog are running after a deer, the distance between them alters from shot to shot, to a ridiculous degree.

There is also a Batman vs Superman poster WITH A RELEASE DATE, they shouldn't have done that without a decent reason, or proof that such a movie is happening.

Anyway, dink ending, decent enough film. I prefer The Omega Man, despite it's emotion-sapping lead. It's just got more shooting and motorbikes in, and a little more blaxploitation.