"I Am Legend"- Movie Review

So this weekend I checked out Will Smith's latest film, "I Am Legend." I was sorely disappointed in the film and felt that many audience members were led astray by an amazing marketing plan.

The film is set in the not-so-distant future and centers around a scientific breakthrough gone wrong. A virus created to be a cure for Cancer has the ultimate effect of turning anyone exposed (internal or airborne) into a rabid, beast-like animal that cannot be exposed to sunlight. As a side-note, I thought it was peculiar that a scientist would create a virus to treat a genetic mutation such as cancer...especially in light of the recent breakthroughs in the field of genetics and the knowledge that genetic problems most likely require a genetic solution.

This movie should not have been billed as an action film. The subject matter is too dark and the ending too anti-climactic to be an action film. With that said, the Director should have directed and edited this film as a dark drama. Will Smith is a great actor but he's directed like an action star in a film where most of his dialogue is with his dog. My biggest issue with the film is that I felt misled. With a film that has so much interesting possibilities, and such dark content, the audience should have been led down the road of a drama. The score and music synced in the film should have reflected a drama. Instead, there were flutes and horns when there should have been violins and mandolins.

Smith's character isn't going to destroy evil or the bad guys with guns and bombs, he has to succeed at creating a vaccine to reverse the effects of a previous virus. With that said, the rabid humans aren't the bad guys and there really is no antagonist. This leads back to my issue with the film's marketing plan. The commercials for the film showed missiles hitting the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges as if there was some attack on humanity by an outside force. However, this film is about man's struggle with his own humanity.

In sum, manage your expectations when seeing the film but I've heard that a better adaptation of this same story can be seen in Charleton Heston's "Omega Man."