The Director Sector

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

“I am impressed,” I said to my girlfriend, as we exited the theatre. “I am very impressed with ‘I Am Legend’.” Ironic, eh?

The story starts out simply enough: a doctor has developed a virus that will work to benefit humans (rather than hurt us) and actually cures cancer. Fast forward three years and we see Dr. Robert Neville (played by Will Smith) driving through the empty streets of New York City with his dog. It is very clear that New York City has been empty and abandoned for years and Nature is taking over. Very shortly we discover that Neville is immune to the virus and has been the lone survivor in Gotham for three years. We also discover that 90% of the world died due to the virus spiraling out of control, 8% of the world turned into what were called Dark Seekers (some sort of zombie), and less than 1% of the world population is immune.

Neville captures Dark Seekers to experiment with a cure. We witness him capture a Dark Seeker female, and the alpha male gets pissed off. Apparently, the female was his girlfriend. This particular Dark Seeker becomes the main antagonist for the rest of the movie.

The plot was pretty solid, with no major goofs that I could detect. The visuals were absolutely stunning. There was nothing left untouched, nothing left unfinished. New York City was mind-bogglingly empty. When I normally think of New York City, I think of people walking constantly, streets jammed packed with cabs, and a cowboy walking around in his underwear. Okay, I normally don’t think about the cowboy. But my point stands — NYC is non-stop movement. To see NYC completely empty shook me to the core of my being — this is it: the end of the human race. The special effects were pretty damn good, too. It was extremely difficult to tell what was CGI and what was real (with the exception of the Dark Seekers — CGI is getting good these days, but for some reason they still have trouble with humanoid figures).

The best part though was Will Smith’s performance of Robert Neville. Smith completely carried the entire movie from the first scene all the way to the end. His acting was impeccable. I truly believed he was the last man on Earth. I read that he talked to convicts who spent long periods of time in solitary confinement, P.O.W.’s, and hermits in order to identify what it is that people who spend that kind of time alone do. He mastered those details perfectly. He essentially created a routine and other people to react off, even though they were all in his head.

Simply an amazing movie. I give it a 9.5 out of 10. Go see it today — you won’t regret it!