Iam Legend review

The critics agree that if you're looking for a big, plenty-of-bang-for-your-buck action blockbuster,
 I Am Legend is probably going to be the movie to help you sweat out some of those festive season toxins.A lightning-paced ride through a post-apocalyptic Manhattan where all the human beings bar Will Smith have been killed by a virus or transformed into zombie-like killers, this is a truly Hollywood movie, with all the positives and negatives that entails. "Conversely, the good guy here is no incidental plebe," she writes. "He's Robert Neville (Smith), thank you very much, decorated colonel, brilliant scientist, fortification specialist, booby trap whiz, moneybags, babe magnet, art collector, dog lover, hunter, gatherer, officer, gentleman, you name it."

A lightning-paced ride through a post-apocalyptic Manhattan where all the human beings bar Will Smith have been killed by a virus or transformed into zombie-like killers, this is a truly Hollywood movie, with all the positives and negatives that entails. "Conversely, the good guy here is no incidental plebe," she writes. "He's Robert Neville (Smith), thank you very much, decorated colonel, brilliant scientist, fortification specialist, booby trap whiz, moneybags, babe magnet, art collector, dog lover, hunter, gatherer, officer, gentleman, you name it." When we’re introduced to this landscape’s only human inhabitant - one Robert Neville (Will Smith), who is conveniently both highly militarily trained and a brilliant virologist - he’s seemingly enjoying his desolate environment, redlining a sports car through town, his faithful canine companion Sam (best animal performance of the decade, say us) gazing happily out of the passenger window. It’s a great opening sequence, especially when it transpires that Neville’s actually on the hunt, rifle in lap, seeking some venison to supplement his tinned provisions.

For a big studio genre film, I Am Legend goes a surprisingly long way to explore psychology, and Smith fearlessly dives headfirst into the mind of an individual who’s had no human contact for almost 40 months.

The little details ring true, such as when Neville chides his dog for not eating her vegetables - he’s  anthropomorphised her so completely that he’s forgotten she’s a carnivore. Ignore the predictably dodgy science and plot-fissures, and you have a tentpole picture that doesn’t, for once, insult its audience’s intelligence. Until…

Sunset. Before we sink our teeth in, let’s make one thing clear: having cut his incisors on infernal comic-book adaptation Constantine, Lawrence knows how to crank tension and apply a shock. So, in its earlier moments, I Am Legend plays on our primal fear of the dark like a maestro. But when it comes to the blood-lapping “dark seekers”, Lawrence’s inadequacies come crashing through. A more experienced director would likely have taken a more clever, less profligate approach to this movie’s monsters. As would a filmmaker who was - like Danny Boyle, helming the superior 28 Days Later - forced to operate on a considerably more limited budget.

After all, what are the dark seekers? Skinny, pale, hairless people with a supernaturally advanced metabolism. So why on Earth did Lawrence choose to make them pure-CG conjurations? And what dismally dire CG it is, too. Lawrence’s ‘vampires’ are cartoonish phantoms, evaporators of fear who mercilessly inhale all the atmosphere so ingeniously woven during the daylight hours. Going full CG was the worst artistic decision Lawrence could have made - short of having the populace of New York suddenly jump out from behind the Empire State and shout “April foo-ool!” at  Neville before cutting to the credits.