I Am Legend
I have hopes that the makers of the new film “I Am Legend” are avid followers of the principles of my great-grandfather, Sherlock Holmes (a fact I must drop into these reviews on a regular basis as per my contract with the publisher). His dictum on vampires was a clear “Rubbish, Watson, rubbish! What have we to do with walking corpses who can only be held in their grave by stakes driven through their hearts? It’s pure lunacy.”
As one who had read the original Richard Matheson novel, I Am Legend, about the last living man on an Earth filled with honest-to-goodness, wooden-stake-able, garlic and cross-fearing vampires, I had previous hopes that this new movie would be more true to the book than the last film adaptation, “The Omega Man.” The title seemed to indicate that. And in the quick snippets shown in the previews, the creatures after the last man on Earth did, indeed, look like vampires.
But they’re not . . .
Like the great seventies Charleton Heston film, “The Omega Man,” this Will Smith incarnation of I Am Legend just gives people a disease that makes them stay out of sunlight. But where “Omega” turned them into crazed cultists who could speak, this version turns them into rabies-crazed meat-eaters with CGI hoppity-hop strength, speed, and agility.
Will Smith, who can draw a crowd with a home movie, gives an enjoyably tragic performance as the last man on Earth. He can make you live his fear before you even know what he’s afraid of. And the redressing of New York City as an abandoned refuge for wildlife is very nicely done, with little Easter eggs for the careful viewer.
A good enough movie, no doubt, had they called it “The Omega Man.” But as a reading person, the title left me with certain expectations unfulfilled.
What Great-grandfather Sherlock might have said:
“A copy, mind you, not the original. That was too dangerous.”
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An Introduction to
Mr. Sherlock Holmes IV
Fantastic Four:
Rise of the Silver Surfer