Official Synopsis:
The last man on earth is not alone. Will Smith portrays that lone survivor in I Am Legend, the action epic fusing heart pounding excitement with a mind blowing vision of a desolated Manhattan. Some how immune to an unstoppable, incurable virus, military virologist Robert Neville (Smith) is now the last human survivor in New York City and maybe the world. But he is not alone. Mutant plague victims lurk in the shadows...watching Neville's every move...waiting for him to make a fatal mistake. Perhaps mankind’s last, best hope, Neville is driven by only one remaining mission: to find an antidote using his own immune blood. But he knows he is outnumbered...and quickly running out of time.

  
Our Take:
Enjoyable, but not epic.

That’s pretty much how I’ve come to describe I Am Legend. What we have here is a really solid, visually exciting post-apocalyptic movie with a fantastic performance by Will Smith. Is it a lot of fun and filled with visceral thrills? Yes. Is it the kind of movie I wanted to watch again the minute it was over the first time? No. Like I said: enjoyable, but not epic.

I’ve heard some complaints about the film’s “villains” and the fact that they’re all completely computer-generated. And while I can see some validity to that, it just doesn’t bother me that much. I think that the creatures are extremely cool and effectively creepy, so the fact that they’re not “real” just wasn’t a problem that affected my enjoyment of the film. I actually enjoy the fact that they’re never labeled as vampires or zombies, either. They’re really just infected/mutated people, and they don’t really require a label to be dangerous and scary.

Visually speaking, the movie is terrific. I Am Legend isn’t the first time we’ve seen a post-apocalyptic New York, but it’s never looked this good before. There are some truly breathtaking shots throughout the film, and the build from quiet desolation to all-out action is a very effective device. Smith really sells the loneliness and isolation that the “last man on earth” would feel, and I think it’s one of his best performances to date. Yes, he seems quite weird at times and isn’t always the cool, suave Will Smith we’ve come to know and love, but that’s true to what his character would be going through and it works well.

I Am Legend comes to DVD as both a single-disc and a two-disc Special Edition DVD. Unfortunately, for the purposes of this review, we only received the single disc. It includes only a few extra features:

* Four Animated Comic -: Death As A Gift, Isolation, Sacrificing The Few for the Many and Shelter.
* DVD-ROM PC Weblink to Bonus Material Databank Chronicling the Movie's Creation and Exploring the History and Current Status of Life-Threatening Viral Infections.

I Am Legend is the kind of film that you can buy or rent, watch and enjoy, and even revisit from time to time, but I don’t think it’s ever going to be the movie that tops people’s “favorite films” lists. While the two-disc Special Edition DVD is the one to get, overall I Am Legend still comes…

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Overall Picture:
Movie: A-
DVD: C

- Mike Spring
Editor