I Am Legend DVD Review

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"I Am Legend" reviews

DVD

I Am Legend

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-04-18 16:50:13

Provider

DVD Review

Will Smith plays Robert Neville - a brilliant army scientist and a seemingly lone survivor on earth after a man-made virus sweeps the world.

Aided by his faithful canine companion, he spends his time either trying to find a cure or combing the eerily quiet New York streets looking for human life. This being a Will Smith movie there also happens to be lots of zombies to kill.

And that is the main problem with the film. On one side you have Will admirably trying to add more to his CV than wisecracking movie star. Neville is a tortured man trying to comprehend the chaos around him and struggling with guilt that he could not do anything about it. He is also slowly going insane without any human contact to share his burdens with. It's a heady part to wrap his acting chops around and it's one he tackles with mixed results.

But the other side is that this is a Will Smith film and his fans don't want to see their hero moping around for two hours. So to quench their thirst they have thrown horribly CGI monsters into the mix as well as a tiresome love interest.

Unsurprisingly the two sides don't sit well together, and it's a shame that such a famous novel by Richard Mattheson has had three movie adaptations (the other two being 1964's Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price and Omega Man starring Charlton Heston in 1971) and none of them have done the source material justice.

The two disc DVD also comes with 90 minutes of bonus footage, including alternate ending and featurettes.