RRP Lowest New Price £13.99

Warner Home Video Release date: Tuesday 18th of March 2008 Starring: Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Alice Braga, Will Smith, Willow Smith, Charlie Tahan, Director(s): Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Colour, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen, Running time: 101 minutes Language: English (Original Language) Language: English (Subtitled) Language: French (Subtitled) Language: Spanish (Subtitled) Language: French (Dubbed) Language: Spanish (Dubbed)

Started well but...
Review date: 2008-11-10 Rating: 4 out of 10

The first hour of the film is by far its strongest. It plays like a cross between 28 Days Later and One Man and His Dog. Smith, in a performance of stamina and subtlety that recalls that of Tom Hanks in Cast Away, wanders around an island that has become a wilderness. There's something childlike and silly in the way that he re-populates the city in his imagination, decking out his local video store with mannequins whom he hails and chats to as if they were old buddies and nothing had happened recently. This is when teh movie becomes silly.

And then, perhaps inevitably, the film goes to hell. The Infected become increasingly visible and what a non-fright they are: at best, hairless fast-moving creatures; at worst, like figures from some techno video a decade ago. The increasingly zombified picture also gets more cloyingly theological (a Brazilian woman, played by City of God's Alice Braga, and her child appear as if from nowhere), crashingly literal ("This is ground zero! This is my site!" he yells), and plain icky (riffs on how Bob Marley is a musical virologist whose rhythms and lyrics might heal humanity).

Meanwhile, the film is littered with scenes that make no sense. We see Neville sprinkling liquid outside his house, presumably the concentrated garlic of the book, although we're not told this. Elsewhere he's shown curled up to sleep in his bath (eh?) and then waking up in his bed. You may also wonder why he chose to hole up in a terraced house that Van Helsing couldn't even hope to defend.


What started out so promisingly, a companion piece of sorts to Children of Men, disappears in a frenzy of screaming, head-banging, bloodiness - followed by an unconvincing redemption. I Am Legend is a disappointment, but one that cannot be laid at Smith's feet. He works very hard and gives a strong performance. Unfortunately, those creative minds responsible for making sure he had a coherent and plausible story to work with let him down.