Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

WubsTheFadger Short and Simple Review by WubsTheFadgerDirector Francis Lawrence has a way with suspense; jumping out of your seat is almost a requirement here. Onscreen, Manhattan transforms into a true island, isolated, removed, and falling apart. Weeds grow on the streets, Times Square is deserted, the Flatiron Building sits neglected, and an eerie hush has fallen. Bravo to the special effects crew, who have created a New York never seen before (except, perhaps, in Escape to New York). The results are nothing short of amazing.But the story ultimately disappoints. It starts out strong, hooking viewers in, but it sputters in the end. It's as if the screenwriters (or director, or producer) ran out of ways to wrap it up. Or perhaps the film simply doesn't have the same nuances as the Richard Matheson book on which it's based. Still, you can't fault I Am Legend for trying to be different from the typical action thriller. Taking on such themes as mankind's need for companionship, the fight for survival, and the existence of God, it at least succeeds in making us think.Overall Rating: 6.0

ThiagoCrivellaro Before Will Smith came out with I Am the Legend, two great actors of the past, Vincent Price and Charlton Heston, were linked to Richard Matheson's novel of the 1950s. The first appeared in Die Dead (1964) while the latter was hero in The Last Hope of the Earth (1971). As I have not watched these versions, I will leave any comparison aside, however, considering the interpreter, the new drapery of the book brings someone much more convincing than updated special effects. Still, he sins by distancing himself a lot from his origin and transforms a great idea into yet another product of man's belief.The kick that throws modern society to collapse lies in a remedy against cancer. Tested on thousands of people and advertised on TV as a great discovery, the product ends up having the opposite effect some time later. In a matter of a few months, civilization is attacked by zombies of great strength and agility, in addition to being quite bloodthirsty. Immune to the effects of the drug and working for years to find a cure, military man Robert Neville (Smith) lives on the abandoned island of Manhattan in New York accompanied by his dog Sam waiting for someday to meet other humans like him. Although lonely in relation to his peers, Neville communicates constantly not to become an autistic. His voice is punctual, for it creates artifice to be spontaneous. He still makes up for his sadness with Sam's friendship, not just because he's a family pet, but for companionship at all times. The animal keeps him mentally healthy in the face of the insanity that has taken over the environment. She is unable to respond to Neville's longings, but it gives her emotional comfort. In this sense, the viewer can understand certain explosive attitudes of the character when the situation is out of control.For two-thirds of the film talking little, Neville seeks to keep himself occupied with scientific experiments, golf games, food hunting, and hunting. Many of the wide-angle plans value both the character's solitude and the size of the holocaust that hit Ground Zero (used in the film as the place where the disease began, not the 9/11 actual terrorist attacks). In one of the hunting moments, the man discovers a lair stuffed with zombies and, when he can capture one of them as a guinea pig, the scale of the problems increases. And when they reach their apex, the script loses its impact.On the one hand writers Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman offered an effective dramatic charge to the protagonist and, in a fair way, added a greater responsibility to this one giving large space to the companion, something that occurs in the book in a different way. In addition, both took from the writer the same composition of scenes between past and present events so that the spectator understands the parallel anxieties of Neville. However, the writer insists on glorifying the characters in order to target their actions to something superior and, through them, to exalt symbols and Christianity that insure as the beginning of the future. He still composes the third act with some mean dialogues, among them about Bob Marley.In another case, director Francis Lawrence is able to take measures that raise tension at the most dynamic moments of the narrative, but makes the film false by demonstrating once again the desire to let the special effects fill the screen as it did in Constantine. Of course, it's all a fantasy, but do we have to see something bad? Zombies are more deformed by their digital composition than by the ugliness provided by their disease. Beyond them, animals, vegetation and abandoned buildings as scenery also artificially appear in several scenes.I Am Legend has become the biggest box office hit based on a zombie story, even though the patients presented are less realistic than the horror films of George Romero, Zack Snyder and Danny Boyle. It is clear that Will Smith was instrumental in the success of the project and the subliminal message has had an effect. Unfortunately, the film will pass on the history of cinema as another adaptation of Matheson's work without the main aspect of that plot: its ending. Hollywood studios have lots of creative people who could film the last pages of the book; they lack courage

slightlymad22 Continue my plan to watch every Will Smith movie in order, I come to I Am Legend (2007)Plot In A Paragraph: Three years after a man made cure for cancer evolves, causing all infected to either die or turn into bloodthirsty monsters, Dr. Robert Neville (Smith) alongside his dog, Samantha, are the last survivors in New York City, and possibly the world. Neville, in the meantime, struggles to find a cure.I know the movie gets a lot of hate, but I really like it. We get some decent acting from Will Smith, especially when he is talking to the mannequin in the video store, after THAT death. Which I still hate to watch. It's not perfect, some of the cgi isn't great, it has a few plot holes and I don't care how far in the future this is set, I don't believe anybody would never have heard of Bob Marley, yet knows his son Damian Marley (whom I'd never heard of) but that's just a minor gripe.Overall it's well acted, well paced and has a good sense of atmosphere. I like it. I Am Legend grossed $256 million at the domestic Box Office (his third movie of $250 million and 7th $100 million grossed in a row) to end the year, the 7th highest grossing movie of 2007. His best performing movie since Men In Black 10 years earlier.

egasulla If this wasn't based on the book by Richard Matheson, it would be just another silly sci-fi flick. Still a very bad one, but one of many.Problem is, it is based on the book, a great one, but the message is fully reverted. It's not just an adaptation, it's a complete 180 degrees turn, almost as if the script writer hated the novel and purposely set on destroying its message.No spoilers here, suffice to say that even the title does not make sense in the context of the movie, while it is central to the book.I wish there was a law against adapting books without carrying the basic message more or less untouched. Turns out not only there isn't, but movie adaptations have the power to make boatloads of money, so I guess Matheson made some nice bucks from copyrights, and thus he might have been happy with the outcome. As a loving reader of his great story, I'm not.