Movie review: In 'Legend,' Will Smith is not alone

"I Am Legend” starts off with a good premise: In New York City, Dr. Robert Neville, the lone survivor of a man-made virus that killed 90 percent of the population and turned 9 percent of the remaining people into rabid vampiric zombies, struggles daily to endure while working to create a cure using the immunity in his blood. His only companion is his dog, Sam.

This film draws immediate comparisons with “Cast Away” because both follow a man’s solitary existence. But really, this is where any comparison should end. Tom Hank’s Chuck Noland was on a deserted island where even finding food was a struggle but where the possibility of escape back to civilization was real.

For Will Smith’s Neville, food and medicine are not an issue, civilization is — he is living in its ruins. Survival, then, depends on not becoming a meal for what is left of humanity.

This role is a true test of Will Smith’s star power. Sure, we know he can carry a film (see, “I, Robot,” “Hitch” or “Pursuit of Happyness”), but can he carry a film in which he is virtually the only character? Does he have the magnetism to keep an audience riveted for 101 minutes?

My guess is that audiences will answer, “Yes.” Smith does an able job. Though I do think that the periodic flashbacks (depicted as Neville’s dreams) help break up what could easily have become the monotony of Neville’s daily routines.

Since the audience is introduced to Neville and his plight three years into it, Neville has his life pretty well ordered: He knows to set his watch for the coming sunset, so he’ll be safely back inside his enfortressed home before dark. He systematically makes his way through apartment buildings, searching for supplies. And he spends time in his lab conducting serum trials on infected rats.

So the flashbacks that show how Neville ended up alone on the island of Manhattan are a nice change of pace for the viewer.

One of the great things about starting the film three years after the end of civilization is getting to see New York City returning to nature. Weeds and grasses now grow between cracks in the pavement and wildlife roams the streets.

There is an amazing scene early in the film in which Neville races around Manhattan in a Mustang while hunting a herd of deer. It is both beautiful and unnerving to see the deer jumping over abandoned cars and galloping down empty avenues.

One of the strongest aspects of the film is its depiction of how three years with only a dog for a companion can affect a man psychologically. The way Neville talks to Sam, his German shepherd, reminds one of how he might have spoken to his daughter (played in flashbacks by Smith’s own daughter, Willow Smith).

But where “I Am Legend” really plays with Neville’s psychology is at the local video rental store, where mannequins are placed in various locations: a couple approaching the door, two or three singles placed so they seem to be browsing titles and one behind the counter. It seems clear that at some point in the past, Neville himself placed the mannequins that inhabit the store. I imagine he did it both as a kind of joke and as a comforting illusion.

However, three years later, the joke seems to have been forgotten, and he has started to believe the illusion. Smith does a fine job displaying the emotional breakdown this scene reveals.

At first, it is easy to believe Neville is just acting a part as he talks to the mannequins when he enters the store. The true depth of his loneliness and what this has wrought on his mind becomes clear, however, as he shows curiosity about a nearby female mannequin. Again, this might be Neville pretending — going through the motions — but later he discusses with Sam his timidity in approaching the “girl.”

Smith’s performance of these scenes is touching, evoking sadness and true concern for Neville’s sanity and ultimate survival. Having said that, there is something about the whole thing that doesn’t quite jibe with the rationality of Neville’s character as a doctor still stable enough to be creating serums and conducting experiments.

Where is that rational part of his mind in those moments at the video store? OK, so he is having a hard time emotionally. But it would have felt truer to show at least a flicker of reality intruding while he was giving in to his emotional urges. Depicting this kind of struggle also would have lent greater weight to a scene late in the film when, after suffering a traumatic loss, he returns to talk to the “girl” at the video store.

The weakest part of the film are the “dark seekers” — those infected with the virus who have now become vampire-like in their lust for blood and their severe sensitivity to sunlight, zombie-like in their appearance and their mindless pursuit of human flesh, and rabid in their crazed and vicious attacks.

It is not their existence in the film that I object to, nor is it the skirmishes between them and Neville. What I object to is the heavy-handed computer animation used to create these characters: They have a plastic quality that is just not human — it screams CGI and ruins the verisimilitude of the film. A good make-up artist would have been a better choice.

The movie also left some unanswered questions, and not the good kind where one might spend a few days pondering the mystery of it all. Rather they were of the “there’s a hole in the plot” variety.

Still, even including a somewhat formulaic ending, it was an affecting film: I admit to getting a bit choked up. Plus, it’s Will Smith. Surely his presence alone is worth the price of admission.