I Am Legend (2007)
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/2.35:1 101m
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Emma Thompson
Synopsis:
After a virus obliterates most of the world's population, condemning the remainder to the status of rabidly vampiric zombies, a military epidemiologist who has been left immune remains behind in Manhattan with his dog for company. Eking out a solitary existence patrolling the avenues by day and barricading himself in at night, he attempts to formulate a vaccine from his own blood.
Review:
Preceded by the retitled The Omega Man, this first explicit filming of the eponymous novel boasts predictably more fearsome, and unaccountably vigorous, monsters, but otherwise takes its cue from the original: Neville talks to dummies and replays past recordings to manufacture his own normality (here news broadcasts as opposed to Woodstock provide the added function of filling in backstory for the audience). The use of flashbacks as the character is plagued by bitter memories is another embellishment that enriches rather than subtracts from the overall impact (it must be said that Smith is a very different presence to Heston, less the besieged military leader, more the traumatised and bereaved family man). The film works up to some tense sequences and delivers spectacularly deserted Manhattan vistas (visual effects have moved on), but one misses the dialogue between Neville and his mutant nemesis.
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/2.35:1 101m
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Emma Thompson
Synopsis:
After a virus obliterates most of the world's population, condemning the remainder to the status of rabidly vampiric zombies, a military epidemiologist who has been left immune remains behind in Manhattan with his dog for company. Eking out a solitary existence patrolling the avenues by day and barricading himself in at night, he attempts to formulate a vaccine from his own blood.
Review:
Preceded by the retitled The Omega Man, this first explicit filming of the eponymous novel boasts predictably more fearsome, and unaccountably vigorous, monsters, but otherwise takes its cue from the original: Neville talks to dummies and replays past recordings to manufacture his own normality (here news broadcasts as opposed to Woodstock provide the added function of filling in backstory for the audience). The use of flashbacks as the character is plagued by bitter memories is another embellishment that enriches rather than subtracts from the overall impact (it must be said that Smith is a very different presence to Heston, less the besieged military leader, more the traumatised and bereaved family man). The film works up to some tense sequences and delivers spectacularly deserted Manhattan vistas (visual effects have moved on), but one misses the dialogue between Neville and his mutant nemesis.
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/2.35:1 101m
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Emma Thompson
Synopsis:
After a virus obliterates most of the world's population, condemning the remainder to the status of rabidly vampiric zombies, a military epidemiologist who has been left immune remains behind in Manhattan with his dog for company. Eking out a solitary existence patrolling the avenues by day and barricading himself in at night, he attempts to formulate a vaccine from his own blood.
Review:
Preceded by the retitled The Omega Man, this first explicit filming of the eponymous novel boasts predictably more fearsome, and unaccountably vigorous, monsters, but otherwise takes its cue from the original: Neville talks to dummies and replays past recordings to manufacture his own normality (here news broadcasts as opposed to Woodstock provide the added function of filling in backstory for the audience). The use of flashbacks as the character is plagued by bitter memories is another embellishment that enriches rather than subtracts from the overall impact (it must be said that Smith is a very different presence to Heston, less the besieged military leader, more the traumatised and bereaved family man). The film works up to some tense sequences and delivers spectacularly deserted Manhattan vistas (visual effects have moved on), but one misses the dialogue between Neville and his mutant nemesis.