Movie Review: I Am Legend

In the long-running case of Chicken vs. Egg, this court finds in the favor of I Am Legend.

Although the plaintiff 28 Days Later makes a compelling case for having "been there first," as they described it, I Am Legend is, in fact, laden with precedent. The science fiction/horror film starring Will Smith is the third remake of a 1954 story by Richard Matheson. Previous versions starred Vincent Price as The Last Man on Earth in 1964 and Charlton Heston as The Omega Man in 1971.

But while 28 Days Later is derivative of this source material, "Legend" is found inferior on several counts.

Both tell similar tales of a plague unleashed by scientists that turned people into flesh-eating zombies and of the survivors who either escaped or were immune.

In "Legend," Smith is the last man alive in a Manhattan gone native, overgrown with grasses and overrun by "Jumanji"-like herds of animals loping through gauntlets of abandoned cars.

He lives in a brownstone fortified with food, weapons and old movies and TV shows, and has no one to talk to except his German shepherd, a la Tom Hanks and Wilson in Cast Away.

But Smith is not just another guy: He is the military scientist charged with finding a cure for a plague that was the unintended consequence of a cure for cancer whose side effects included rabies and a hunger for human flesh. The infected also develop a vampire-like aversion to light, and howling packs of them roam the streets at night. Smith hunts and traps them, then takes them to his laboratory where he continues his search for a cure.

Music video director Francis Lawrence, who directed the supernatural thriller Constantine, conjures a digital post-apocalyptic world that feels startlingly authentic, recently inhabited and eerily desolate. And I, Robot screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, has created a smart and spare story line in which all that we see of civilization is the way Smith clings to his rituals.

Despite this, "Legend" feels as empty as the film's portrait of a deserted Times Square. It is star- and character-driven, while 28 Days Later was an idea-driven nightmare with a post-9/11 subtext compared with blatant references to ground zero in "Legend."

And for a movie in which the undead roam, "Legend" is reluctant to embrace its inner "Z" word. And so uprooted, it looks and behaves like any other action film, in which tense moments and genre set pieces are all reassuringly visceral, without challenging expectations or assumptions. I liked it better when it was called 28 Days Later.

I Am Legend ** 1/2