I Am Legend (Blu-ray) (2007)

"...a stunning glimpse into how the city - as we know it today - might look in 2012 if it were abandoned in 2009.  Jack Mathews, New York Daily News
"As Tom Hanks did in "Cast Away," Will Smith pulls off this half-insane role perfectly.  James Berardinelli's ReelViews
"A scary, inventive, exciting and breathless adventure that combines the best elements of "Children of Men," "Escape from New York" and "The Road Warrior"...  Kyle Smith, New York Post
"...the opposite of "Transformers": It's all about the unsettling silence, not the noise.  Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
"Mind-blowing excitement.  Pete Hammond, Maxim
"...fully affirms Smith as one of the great leading men of his generation.  Scott Foundas, The Village Voice
"...three movies in one: a futuristic effects-o-rama, a zombie thriller and a survivalist parable.  William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Editor's Note In I AM LEGEND, Will Smith joins the ranks of Vincent Price (in 1964's THE LAST MAN ON EARTH) and Charlton Heston (in 1971's OMEGA MAN) as the star of an adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel of the same name. Often surprising in its focus on loneliness and loss, this thoughtful, eerie, and restrained sci-fi horror film provides a parade of startling visuals, but never allows special effects to overcome the human element. Smith, in a strong performance very different from his usual persona, is Robert Neville, the lone survivor in a New York City where streets are overgrown and deer gambol among deserted automobiles. Following an epidemic, the Earth's population has been turned into an army of nocturnal zombies. Immune to the virus, military scientist Neville searches for a cure in his Washington Square townhouse. Haunted by visions of his family leaving quarantined Manhattan two years prior, he drives through the city with his German Shepherd, Sam, by day and barricades his home from the monsters nightly. But when Anna (Alice Braga)--another immune stranger-finds him, they will have to fight the onslaught twice as hard. Akiva Goldsman and Mark Protosevich's emotionally-charged script showcases the charisma of Smith, who commands the screen alone for most of the picture (aside Abbey, a talented German Shepherd). Director Francis Lawrence (CONSTANTINE) uses music minimally, wisely allowing the eerie cityscapes to remain mostly silent. The set pieces, including an overgrown, deserted Times Square and a lion hunting a deer in the Flatrion District, are goosebump-inducing moments of stark beauty. Though some may question the rendering of the monsters in CGI instead of using actors, it does allow them to be frighteningly acrobatic. A chilling and effective adaptation of a horror classic, I AM LEGEND is also a thought-provoking piece of Hollywood filmmaking.

	Will Smith
	Charlie Tahan
	Dash Mihok
	Willow Smith
	Salli Richardson
	Alice Braga
	Mark Protosevich - Screenwriter
	Akiva Goldsman - Screenwriter
	Akiva Goldsman - Producer
	Andrew Lesnie - Director of Photography
	Neal H. Moritz - Producer
	Richard Matheson - Source Writer
	James Lassiter - Producer
	James Newton Howard - Composer
	David Heyman - Producer
	Francis Lawrence - Director

USA Today
"[Smith is] one of the very few actors who can star essentially solo in a feature-length film and keep us riveted....[His] physical transformation is awe-inspiring..." 12/14/2007

Los Angeles Times
"[S]lick, adrenaline-fueled fun....The first third of the movie is a high-octane joy ride through post-apocalyptic Manhattan..." 12/14/2007

Rolling Stone
3 stars out of 4 -- "It is totally cool to see Manhattan devoid of people as Will Smith and his dog roam the ruins....Director Francis Lawrence keeps you squirming." 12/27/2007 p.124

Empire
3 stars out of 5 -- "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." 02/01/2008 p.44-45

Ultimate DVD
4 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's a lean, eerie sci-fi thriller with the kind of brains and heart not normally found in multiplex movies, and some genuinely affecting moments." 05/01/2008 p.71

Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
The opening scenes of "I Am Legend" have special effects so good that they just about compensate for some later special effects that are dicey. We see Manhattan three years after a deadly virus has killed every healthy human on the island, except one. The streets are overgrown with weeds, cars are abandoned, the infrastructure is beginning to collapse...In "I Am Legend," the situation raises questions of logic. If Neville firmly believes he is the last healthy man alive, who is the vaccine for? Only himself, I guess. Fair enough, although he faces a future of despair, no matter how long his cans of Spam and Dinty Moore beef stew hold out; dogs don't live forever...Given its setup, "I Am Legend" is well-constructed to involve us with Dr. Neville and his campaign to survive..."I Am Legend" does contain memorable scenes, as when the island is being evacuated, and when Neville says goodbye to his wife and daughter (Salli Richardson and Willow Smith), and when he confides in his dog (who is not computer-generated, most of the time, anyway). And if it is true that mankind has 100 years to live before we destroy our planet, it provides an enlightening vision of how Manhattan will look when it lives on without us. The movie works well while it's running, although it raises questions that later only mutate in our minds. - Roger Ebert

Variety 9 of 10
Remarkably eerie yet annoyingly larded with cheap horror-film shock effects, "I Am Legend" stands as an effective but also irksome adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic 1954 sci-fi novel. In what is to a considerable extent a solo turn as the last healthy human on a post-plague planet Earth, Will Smith strongly holds the screen in a one-man Alamo besieged by marauding cannibals...Although Smith's role may not be as difficult in certain ways as Tom Hanks' was in "Cast Away" -- Smith gets to move around a lot, indulge in eye-catching action scenes and interrelate with a wonderful dog rather than a volleyball -- they are comparable in that both parts required the actors to carry their films virtually singlehandedly, with long silent passages. Smith manages it very well, showboating only briefly to show off his newly trim physique and intermittently displaying the incipient madness that would surely come from being alone against an unrelenting threat...What remains most memorable about the picture are the images of a stark, uninhabited New York City; to this end, production designer Naomi Shohan, the large art department and visual effects teams and lenser Andrew Lesnie contributed much imagination and expertise. Tech side is all high-end. - Todd McCarthy