‘Legend?’ Maybe.

You should go see I Am Legend. Why? Well, it is a hard task to carry an entire movie (this one coming in at 100 min.) by yourself for at least three quarters of it. Tom Hanks did a fine job of it in Cast Away and Will impresses here.

Directed by Francis Lawrence (who has really only done music videos before now), the movie is sparse and alone. With a downed housing market, war abroad, nuclear threats, rising gas prices and high murder rates, the kind of fear, uncertainty and isolation many of us may feel as we struggle to make it is mirrored in the temperament of the film. Smith’s character, Dr. Robert Neville, is the apparent sole, human survivor of an airborne and skin contact outbreak. He spends his days researching a cure, and searching the apartments, Burroughs and streets of New York for food, supplies and whatever else may be out there. Watching him cross out on a map one of the neighborhoods he has completely probed is a great window into how his world has turned into a systematic voyage into a concrete wilderness, fulfilling in its utility if not terrifying for its ominous unpredictability.

Neville is kept company by his faithful dog, a radio broadcast, and visits to a video rental store. The occasional street chase for deer provide many of the film’s early thrills. That the movie devolves into something of a zombie picture is almost a disappointment. I mean, it has been done with great aplomb already and to marvelous effect in the features 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. However, if the attackers are metaphors for the ways destruction and hopelessness seem to claw at our heels, they are effective even if redundant.

Usually, I will not see a movie without reading several reviews first and many critics thought the film’s end was trite and a bit of a letdown. For me, the end redeemed the whole of the movie. And I only wish the themes and ideas introduced in the end had been considered as ambitiously as some of the CGI and effects work. I tried not to give you too much information, but whether you see the movie should hinge on how important you think this kind of question is: when everything you’ve learned and come to rely on has failed, what, if anything, is left?

The answer to this question may be your legend.

(image via: iamlegend.warnerbros.com)