I am Legend

The 'last man' narrative is a beguiling one. There is something indelibly alluring about a lonely dystopian wasteland. Inevitably we put ourselves in the position of this castaway. It’s a genre that invites the feeling of loneliness. It’s undeniably an enticing scenario: no longer fettered by the trips and traps of the modern world, our hero is given rare license over all existence, doomed and damned to live by whim and will. Roaming in his demented paradise, the ‘last man’ struggles without the wax of other people’s perception with which to seal his existence. There have been a good few attempts at capturing the unique, morbid pleasures of this situation and this expensive, expansive blockbuster is one of the best.

I am Legend doesn't go quite as far as the superb, deranged last man of The Quiet Earth (the super, superlative ‘last man’ movie), but Will Smith, as Lt. Col. Robert Neville, is convincingly perturbed, marking time through plausible routines, whiling away an interminable eternity, confined by an austere and lonely freedom. The shocks he suffers are aggressive, the sound design appropriately violent and the film’s overall textual feel is perfectly executed. The money shot of such films are always the images of deserted streets. Both The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959, based on MP Shiel’s classic tale of apocalypse The Purple Cloud) and The Last Man of Earth (1964s previous incarnation of this narrative) present chilling, uninhabited vistas. However, I am Legend probes a little further into the abandoned lives of the diseased refugees, the anguish and desperation lingering long after they have departed. A home is never truly empty, something the tortured Neville comes to understand, stumbling over a quarantined baby’s crib.

Considering the titanic budget, this is an incredibly understated film, unexpectedly so, focusing on the details of Neville's life, revealing the seeds of his emotional stagnation in tantalising, economical flashback. This is a very old fashioned kind of film, which has, of course been made twice before. Like any major release, it is subtle up to a point. Of course, the amount of money spent has to be displayed with a little shock and awe and the 30,000 strong crowd sequence and obligatory exploding helicopter (try to think of a blockbuster without an out of control whirring bird) reassure us that millions have been efficiently wasted.

Like Rod Serling, Richard Matheson is one of the unsung inspirations behind some of the more intelligent and crazed Hollywood films for of the last fifty years, having imagined worlds within worlds, only fractionally disturbed from our own: The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Devil Rides Out (1968), The Omega Man (1971), The Legend of Hell House (1973) and Stir of Echoes (1999), to name only his major efforts. Matheson was also a prolific hack for shows such as The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, The Outer Limits and Ghost Story. The world of I am Legend is typical of Matheson’s work, a place of relative and sliding morality given up to compromising circumstance. Neville is also a classic creation of the author, a man who carries within him responsibility for the world’s ills, misguidedly trying to turn against the wave of sinister events that engulf him, believing until the last that he, at the very centre of things, might reverse the disaster.

Whether classic or old fashioned, I can’t tell – and don’t care – because the film works wonderfully. Indeed, it's heartening to think that the most successful film (financially) for some time (until the next mega-hit) also happens to be a very strong, entertaining one. It was of little or no consequence to me that there were a few loose ends in the film – the inexplicable leap in intelligence displayed by the vampires, the vague and reluctant attempt to establish a recognizable vampire nemesis, the fact that the streets were so clear – as the filmmakers had set up so enjoyably the surface reality of the film.

There was a mechanical pleasure to be had in watching Will Smith (and he is only ever Will Smith, right?) go through his daily routine of scavenging, pectoral sculpting and sleeping with his dog in the bath. As far as a film desperate to attain 'wide appeal' can, I am Legend presents a truly disturbed hero barely able to hold back a maddening sense of responsibility and loss. He is presented as both the cause and perpetual victim of this personalized apocalypse. He is doomed in his own mind, not just because he is the 'last man', not because everyone is dead, but because he failed to save them. He survives only to prolong his death, to maintain the possibility of dying, no longer truly believing or understanding his true position in the world as it is. Although he has proven resourceful, essentially he has been unable to adapt to the way things are, losing the Darwinian cage fight hands down.

There are not more than a handful of marketable actors who could pull off the role. Like him or lather him, Tom Cruise has the ego and chops to handle it. Tom Hanks has proven himself more than adept at squinting and gut-flapping his way through abandonment. Jew-baiting, sugar-tit-lovin' Mel Gibson is probably one of only a few of the seniors who retains, on screen, an irascible kind of magnetism for this kind of jaunt. Smith, magazines have screamed at me, has now joined this charmed Hollywood elite. He's a figure with little historical coherence and his body of work still suggests he hasn't found the niche that actors of a similar stature enjoy; Denzel Washington has his righteous pride, Russell Crowe has his piggish intelligence, and Clooney has his lubricated cerebrum. I am not certain what Will Smith is supposed to do best and my narrow mind needs the security of that predictability – no doubt a result of growing up in the 80s, watching actors with high concept faces. But this is just a grumble. He is actually quite terrific in the movie, winding his way through the obsessive nuances of Neville and managing to be charming throughout. His invention of solitude is a convincing one. So much so that, to me, it actually looks like fun.

Finally, this is an apocalypse to enjoy: a delicious, severely marketed product that, like Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow before it, still retains a certain freshness on first viewing, not entirely obliterated by over exposure. As someone pointed out to me, if they had intended this to be a truly terrifying experience, they would have cast Martin Lawrence.