It makes The Omega Man look like some crappy old Chuck Heston movie.

I saw I Am Legend Friday night, and I was surprised at how good it was. Honestly, I was expecting something more along the lines of I, Robot, which was a moderately entertaining, two-hour long advertisement. I think this picture from The Best Page in The Universe sums up the gist of that movie.



Anywho, back to the good movie. I've seen The Omega Man (1971), which is a good lying-on-the-couch-watching-old-sci-fi-after-I-mowed-the-lawn movie. I didn't see The Last Man on Earth (1964), which was the first of the three movies made from the 1954 Richard Matheson novel, I Am Legend. I don't plan on seeing it, either. It stars Vincent Price, who although is famous for his horror work, I don't think was a particularly good actor. That and Matheson wrote the script for the movie, but then insisting he be credited as Logan Swanson because they rewrote the script in his absence and butchered it. He didn't want that stinker attributed to him, hence the nom de plume.

Apparently this latest incarnation with Smith is closer to the original story than the previous films, and even if it isn't, it's certainly much better. It's somewhat plot, but much more performance driven, and it takes an actor of Smith's caliber to make this movie as good as it is. His acting (which is probably 90% or more of the screen time) is convincing yet subtle, and probably lost on many laypeople (including myself, somewhat.) Like DeNiro, his facial expressions and body language are what really sell it, although his spoken parts are fantastic as well. He plays the military mind-set (won't leave his post), the loneliness, the fear, the despair, and the rage (I won't say why) all equally well.

I thought the telling of the story was well-paced, although that could have been because I knew the story in a nut-shell already. The friend I saw it with actually said half-way through, "Dood, this is boring." As I said though, the strength of the movie was the performance. I think if you don't get sucked in by that, and are expecting a faster pace, you might not dig it. Luckily, however, that wasn't me.

Another facet I really enjoyed about this movie was the message. It doesn't really show up until the end, but it's a good one. It reminds us why it's important to keep fighting the good fight, even if you look sure to lose. It really beats the pants of the allegory in The Omega, which was just a hammy Passion Play, with Heston playing the allegorical Christ. I tells ya, first Moses, then Jesus. Chucky baby had to be eating that up.

*** A little digression here. I rip on Charleton Heston quite a bit, yet I watch The Omega Man, Soylent Green, and the first two Planet of The Apes movies whenever they're on TV. I have even rented most of them from Netflicks. It's funny that he's done so much classic sci-fi - I wonder if he laments not getting to be in Logan's Run. (DAMN MICHAEL YORK! DAMN HIM ALL TO HELL!) I swear that cat smiles upside down. It's creepy. Anyway, I like all these movies, but I think I can say with confidence that Charleton Heston being in them had nothing to do with my enjoyment. You could have cast many other actors and gotten movies just as good if not better. The same can't be said for I Am Legend. ***

The only criticisms I have are the CGI bad guys, and the main character's reaction to seeing real people again. As for the later, I wasn't 100% sold on his reaction, but honestly there are a couple of good reasons why he might act the way he did (but I won't go into them for spoiler sake). I personally can't fathom being completely alone in the world, save for vampiric monster people trying to kill me, and then running into other real people, so maybe that reaction was completely appropriate.

As for the CGI critters, their movement was actually superb, but up close they didn't look opaque and three dimensional enough, and their physiology was too skewed to look real (possibly to make them look scarier, but if that's the case I think it backfired). Ten years ago they would have been the bomb-diggity, but in comparison to Spider-Man and other fantastic CGI work nowadays, it was lacking.

The last negative on this movie was that Smith has a female German Shepard as his only companion, and Samantha looked awfully like my Gretel. It was a strange experience mourning my pooch again while watching the movie, but actually may be a small part of why I got so deep into it.

Hopefully with this movie and Ali, Smith will leave stuff like Bad Boys and Independence Day for his early career. In keeping with the Kool-Aid Gang's metrics, I rate this movie Very Cheesy, bearing in mind that I would reserve Dangerously Cheesy for life-changing movies, such as Forrest Gump, American Beauty, and The Green Mile.