Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1665 in DVD
• 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: 100 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

Here There Be Darkseekers!
I Am Legend brings to the screen the story of what appears to be the sole healthy survivor of a human-evoked biological catastrophe who spends the remainder of his life searching for a cure during the day and fending off the infected survivors during the night. At first it might seem like an improbable scenario, but Hollywood has been noted (surprisingly or not so surprisingly) to foresee destructive events before (e.g. Wag the Dog-instead of Albania it was Yugoslavia, The Day after Tomorrow-instead of ice it's hurricanes, Deep Impact-instead of a tidal wave hitting the USA it hits Indonesia and Sri Lanka, Outbreak-instead of the Ebola-like virus it's SARS and/or the bird flu, etc), The Island-and the real prospect of the production of human clones for `spare parts,' etc.
The film does a good job of getting the message across, as it should do, in making people aware that messing around with viruses and genetic engineering will sooner or later lead to a mistake that mankind will regret. It is inevitable.
In addition, the movie should have been rated R and not PG-13.
In short, Will Smith's acting, the plot, and the setting, are all very good, and I Am Legend is one of those films that gets you and keeps you thinking long after it's over!

PS Just wondering if someone could shed some light as to whose trap he springs and falls into?

Robinson Crusoe in Zombie island...
I think the book and movie also based on a lonely and strong character. Like a lonely man in an island full of cannibals, he tried to civilize them. He try to cure and normalize these creatures.
Mostly a phsycological movie at same time.
I suggest this movie especially in HD-DVD.

I am Legend DVD
Not my type of movie. It was purchased as a gift for a Will Smith fan.