Product Description

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 11/11/2008 Run time: 100 minutes Rating: Pg13

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #334 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2008-03-18
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 101 minutes

Amazon.com
Will Smith stars in the third adaptation of Richard Matheson’s classic science-fiction novel about a lone human survivor in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by vampires. This new version somewhat alters Matheson’s central hook, i.e., the startling idea that an ordinary man, Robert Neville, spends his days roaming a desolated city and his nights in a house sealed off from longtime neighbors who have become bloodsucking fiends. In the new film, Smith’s Neville is a military scientist charged with finding a cure for a virus that turns people into crazed, hairless, flesh-eating zombies. Failing to complete his work in time--and after enduring a personal tragedy--Neville finds himself alone in Manhattan, his natural immunity to the virus keeping him alive. With an expressive German shepherd his only companion, Neville is a hunter-gatherer in sunlight, hiding from the mutants at night in his Washington Square town house and methodically conducting experiments in his ceaseless quest to conquer the disease.

The film’s first half almost suggests that I Am Legend could be one of the finest movies of 2007. Director Francis Lawrence’s extraordinary, computer-generated images of a decaying New York City reveal weeds growing through the cracks of familiar streets that are also overrun by deer and prowled by lions. It’s impossible not to be fascinated by such a realistically altered cityscape, reverting to a natural environment, through which Smith moves with a weirdly enviable freedom, offset by his wariness over whatever is lurking in the dark of bank vaults and parking garages. Lawrence and screenwriters Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman wisely build suspense by withholding images of the monsters until a peak scene of horror well into the story. It must be said, however, that the computer-enhanced creatures don’t look half as interesting as they might have had the filmmakers adhered more to Matheson’s vampire-nightmare vision. I Am Legend is ultimately noteworthy for Smith’s remarkable performance as a man so lonely he talks to mannequins in the shops he frequents. The film’s latter half goes too far in portraying Smith’s Neville as a pitiable man with a messianic mission, but this lapse into bathos does nothing to take away from the visual and dramatic accomplishments of its first hour. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Great Remake!
I have the Charlton Heston version of this film, titled "The Omega Man," and can say that "I Am Legend" is a great remake of the story. While TOM was more religious in nature, which was accepted at the time (it was in essence a Vegetable Myth story,) IAL takes a more objective view of the story. And the approaches to the theory behind the approach that the writers took, with the research into the development of mutations of viruses made it the more believable.
I applaud the believability that the writers presented.

What Does it Take to Become a Legend?
I Am Legend, the novel, spawned the vampires-as-physical-phenomena genre. Vulnerabilities to religious icons were merely psychological holdovers from victims of a disease who believed they were vampires. But the thirst for blood was very real. It established the post-apocalyptic fear of contamination.

Since I Am Legend is a Will Smith vehicle, I figured it'd have some wisecracks, a lot of action, and Smith saving the day. So I was surprised to get exactly that - but not delivered in the way I expected.

I Am Legend is very much like a A Boy & His Dog in that our two protagonists are Robert Neville (Will Smith), a virologist responsible for finding a cure in New York City, and his dog Samantha, wandering a world gone mad. What's interesting about I Am Legend is the question posed by the title. Why is Neville a legend?

The most obvious answer is that Neville is immune to the disease that has converted 90 percent of humanity. As such, he believes he holds the cure within himself. In that regard, if Neville can succeed in stopping the plague, he will be a legend to all of humankind. But there's more to I Am Legend than that.

It's fitting that his companion is a dog. With only Sam as his companion, Neville is truly a legend; the only other living being idolizes Neville, just as dogs idolize their masters. Neville also creates a fictional community of people out of mannequins in a DVD rental store, where everybody knows his name. Neville is indeed a legend in his own mind.

There's also the possibility, posited in the original story, that Neville isn't famous as a savior, but infamous amongst the new breed of humanity as a mass murderer. In that regard Neville is legendary not because of whom he saves but whom he kills. Neville sacrifices countless of the infected in a quest for a cure, and in the process loses a little bit of his own humanity.

I Am Legend could easily have been an egotistical macho romp in a world gone mad in the vein of Mad Max. Instead, it is a thoughtful meditation on how communities define ourselves, even if your only friend is a dog. Although the director flinches at the uncompromising ending that could have been (and is on the two-disc special edition), I Am Legend is a serious entry in both science fiction movies and Will Smith's string of blockbusters.

Will Smith versus Act Up.
Don't waste time with this movie. Lucky I didn't pay for it. The Omega Man was much better. This one was outright stupid. Will Smith can't act, and the bald sissys terrorizing him reminds you of an Act Up revolt. Richard Matheson's plot was drowned by the special effects.