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| Director: | Francis Lawrence | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Name: | I Am Legend | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Starring: | Will Smith | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I Am Legend
by Daniel Rathbone (15/01/2008)
Having read wallz' review of I Am Legend, I felt compelled to share my own take on this film. There are probably spoilers in here but do I look like I give a toss?
First things first, the premise of this entire film is utterly absurd and unbelieveable. That is that someone just 'discovers' a cure for cancer, every cancer sufferer is given the cure and, oh woops! It doesn't, you know, well, work! Well you get rid of the cancer but as a side effect some sort of deadly virus happens to spread through the whole world. Oh cock, maybe we should have done some trials? Endless trials over years and years? Yes, probably would have been a good idea chaps. Preposterous. Anyway once you accept that, then the rest that follows isn't too hard to believe. Yes it is a bit crazy that the only guy who survives is a biologist and capable of finding a cure for the virus, and just happens to be a biologist working for the military and therefore a dab hand at self suffiency and guns and whatnot. Anyway, once you accept all the 'as if' notions the situation presents there is some awesome cinema to watch.
I thought the portroyal of loneliness and being completely alone in the world was pretty good here. A large part of the film just shows Will Smith doing not a great deal except going about his daily business, but that in itself is interesting. The best scene of the whole film (i guess this is where i might introduce a spoiler...) is when his dog runs inside a dark warehouse and a Doom like scene ensues where Smith is wandering around corridors in the dark looking for his dog, the way out, and/or some unknown (at that point) quantity that he seems to fear might eat him. Tense stuff.
The ending is where the film is really let down however. Strange things start happening such as the Vampire/Zombie weirdo things start changing their behaviour quite drastically. This was never really elaborated on and had this been developed further from a science and observational point of view rather the manic blood bath that ensued I would probably have enjoyed it a lot more.
By far the worst part of the film is at the very end where the religious bullshit sentimentality starts taking over, as is sadly often the case in these blockbusters. Smith finds the 'cure' for the mad zombiefying virus thing but its too late as there are about a billion zombies banging on his door trying to, if you'll excuse the Americanism, frag his ass. Of course by this point the gormless woman and child have arrived (the story of where they came from and why and how is still a little vague and is a whole other rant in its own right!) spewing a load of crap about there just has to be some sort of refuge place because GOD TOLD HER! Yeah nice try love. Of course Smith then has a flashback to when his kid died and there is a visual connection with the new kid's tattoo and he realises his purpose in life and he sacrifises himself so that the woman and child might live, big explosion, and cut to shot of woman and child arriving in refuge and OH MY GOD! I can't take it anymore! Make it stop! Luckily it does stop, right there, after some more sentimental musings of course.
OK, so there were some good bits, even some very good bits, but why must so many good films be RUINED by textbook endings that completely shit all over the rest of the film? Sob :(
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| Director: | Francis Lawrence | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Name: | I Am Legend | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Starring: | William Smith. Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, A horde of badly animated CGI monsters. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I Am Legend
by Will Jennison (14/01/2008)
I saw A trailer for I Am Legend a while back and remember thinking that it looked a lot like a remake of The Omega Man, (which in itself is a remake of a previous film, the name eludes me at the moment but it stared Vincent Price.) which as I'm sure I don't have to tell you was a totally kick arse film.
Indeed a little searching of the interwebs seems to reveal that I AM Legend is a remake of The Omega Man
Sadly while The Omega man kicked butt, I Am Legend was terrible and as much as I would like to end the review here, unlike the I Am Legend writers I actually finish what I start.
It's the near future, 2012 if you must know, the entire human race has been wiped out apart from The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air who drives round in a sports car hunting deer with a AR-15 Assault Rife. Dispite being a Colonel in the army he couldn't hit a barn door from two feet away, if he was inside, had unlimited ammo, and unlimited time. In fairness I suppose he is in the U.S. army so I shouldn't be surprised that he can't shoot the deer, after all their not his allies.
Of course though it's not just bullet dodging deer that inhabit the world with him. No sir, it's also revealed to us that in the 3 years since everybody has died, that Lions have started roaming round New York city. Now I realise that my Geography isn't that great but don't lions live in Kenya? and isn't New York roughly 7,413 miles away from Kenya? The Pride of Lions have no trouble catching the deer and so are stealing The Fresh Princes lunch, and even worse then that as the Lions have a baby with them and this is a PG-13 movie he can't shoot the Lions and have his lunch. But it's ok The Fresh Prince has a well stocked larder, mainly because he has the entire worlds food supply to himself.
Oh as well as Deer and Lions there are also strange ghoul type monsters which come out at night, presumably because they are all suffering from Xeroderma pigmentosum, well either that or they're all goths. Sadly they lack the cool zombie/ghoul cult style that "The Family" had and are just very badly computer generated creatures which are about as scary as a Teletubbie, actually scratch that Teletubbies are quiet scary, they're about as scary as a lump of cheese. They are of course the human race as it is now.
Luckily for them The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air wasn't only a Colonel in the army but he's also a top notch scientist boffin who is working on a cure to the diesease.
Inevitably a hot sexy women turns up with child in tow and chaos ensues.
So to sum up, two plus two makes four and I Am Legend is the biggest pile of bilge I have ever had the misfortune to watch. It's so bad that I am thinking of building a time machine so I can go back in time, find myself before I go into see the movie and jam rusty forks into my eyes to save me from having to watch it.
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While I agree that there were parts of this film that were utterly and completely absurd or even disgusting sickeningly sentimental and/or religous, I nonetheless disagree with the general feel of your review. That is to say that you would rather frivilously employ the use of the greatest invention of all mankind to render youself blind, than watch the film again. I would probably have given the film 3.5 out of 5 which would have been a challenge given the site can only accept integers. Having come across that stumbling block I would probably have ruminated for several minutes before deciding I can't possibly commit to a straight 3 or 4 and then simply browsed off to read bbc news or somesuch.
In fact, god damn it, I'll write my own review! Back in a ticky tock... (still not sure what to do about the 3.5 thing though :-/ )
Do you mean the time machine or the rusty forks?
I am currently ruminating on how best to comment on your review. I think I'll have a wander off and read the BBC news or something first.