Not too long ago,
Newsweek
did a story, part feature piece, part analytical, business-minded op-ed, in
which they identified
Will Smith as the most powerful actor in Hollywood,
calling him “the $4 billion man,” in reference to the combined (rounded
slightly down) worldwide gross of his films.
In an industry where an actor’s staying power is determined largely
by opening weekend numbers, Smith represents the surest bet out there — a bankable
star with pan-gender and pan-ethnic appeal, and testable experience in almost every
major genre: action-comedy, science-fiction thriller, romantic-comedy and drama.
His latest film,
I Am Legend, represents Smith taking his big-time summer credibility (
Independence Day, both
Men in Black flicks,
I, Robot) out for a test-drive spin
during the December-to-remember holiday season, which heretofore has been used
to showcase only his more overtly dramatic fare, inclusive of
The Pursuit of Happyness,
2001’s Ali and 1993’s
Six Degrees of Separation, an early crossover effort from director
Fred Schepisi and playwright John Guare.
Still, it’s not quite as strange a seasonal placement as it
seems at first blush.
I Am Legend has
a science-fiction-inspired premise, and some very active and tense moments that
I suppose you could characterize as action scenes. But it’s also a very
expensive character study. To that end, despite its rich screen heritage (the
movie is the third adaptation of Richard Matheson’s original post-apocalyptic
story, which also birthed Vincent Price’s more forthrightly titled
The Last Man on Earth and Charlton
Heston’s
The Omega Man) and the fact
that over the past decade many different possible director-star iterations were
kicked about for an update,
I Am Legend
is distinctively suited to Smith’s extremely likeable star wattage, very much not unlike
Tom Hanks’ turn in
Cast Away (incidentally
a fellow holiday season release, in 2000). The uniqueness and extent to which
the film is a head trip solo show has marketers at Warner Bros. reaching deep
into their playbook, pulling out little-used gambits that sound and feel like
part of the star system of Hollywood of yesteryear. (Says one set of TV
trailers: “There are not enough words to describe the power of…
I Am Legend”.)
Set in 2012, the film stars Smith as Robert Neville, a brilliant
soldier-scientist who, despite being present at “Ground Zero,” could not
contain a terribly lethal, human-engineered virus, the result of research work
to cure cancer. Somehow immune, Neville is now the last (wholly) human survivor
in what is left of
New York City,
and maybe the entire world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out
daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out
there. He’s also continued research on mutant victims of the plague, vampiric
creatures who lurk in the shadows, watching Neville’s every move and waiting
for him to make a mistake.
As mankind’s last hope, Neville is driven by only
one remaining mission: to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus using
his own immune blood. He knows, however, that he’s both outnumbered and running
out of time.
Directed by Francis Lawrence (
Constantine),
I Am Legend makes ace usage of its
locale, an evacuated Manhattan.
Think of the eerie Tom Cruise/deserted Times Square sequence in
Vanilla Sky and Cillian Murphy wandering
about a desolate London in
28 Days Later,
add them together and you have just about half of
the total unforgettable
effectiveness of I Am Legend’s
expansive outdoor passages, which are both wondrous and downright eerie.
The jointly remarkable and unremarkable thing about the
movie, then (unremarkable in that it’s the best, most natural way to tell the
story, yet remarkable in that they actually got away with it in this day and
age) is the fashion in which
this visual desolation and dereliction dovetails
and works so well with Smith’s superb work as the understandably stressed-out
Neville, who has only his dog for companionship.
There are scenes in which we see that, in order to
psychologically cope with the complete destruction of humanity, Neville has set
up clothed mannequins (with whom he chats), and includes pedestrian rituals
such as going to the video store in his daily routine. For most of the movie it’s
not quite an
Apocalypse Now-type
descent into madness — Neville sleeps in a bathtub with a shotgun, but also
recites
Shrek from memory — yet a
little past halfway in, there’s a galvanizing scene which becomes even more chillingly
effective when you realize that your first instincts, of a trap being sprung on
Neville, are incorrect.
Without giving away twists of the final act, including two
bits which require a significant acquiescence to convenience,
I Am Legend fits comfortably among a
spate of recent films — inclusive of dramas, thrillers, action pictures and
anxiety-infused comedies — which all can be boiled down, without much
difficulty, to an underlying theme: we
are lost.
That’s the predominant American screen narrative of our
times, and it’s at the core of this engrossing apocalyptic drama about one man
trying to stave off human extinction and “light up the darkness,” as Bob Marley
sings on the CD to which he faithfully listens.
Of course, for an audience, being lost with Will Smith helps
make that quest more than a little easier and palatable. He may soon yet be
“the $5 billion man.”
For the full original review, from FilmStew, click here.
