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Legendary: Will Smith as Robert Neville |
Legend in the making
I AM LEGEND
Directed by Francis Lawrence
Certificate 15
THEY’VE saved the best 'til last. As the year comes to an end, and with several hundred films under my belt – up to eight a week – it is gratifying to report that this nerve-shredder of a suspense thriller is either going to have you cowering in your seat or under it.
It takes a big man to hold a screen virtually solo for its entire length, and Will Smith is that man. He grabs his role by the throat and shakes every ounce of drama out of it as the last man standing on the planet.
Set a few years from now, a deadly virus has wiped out all human life, and left Smith alone in the decaying streets of New York to come to terms with an unthinkable, solitary future.
Smith plays top scientist Robert Neville, who finds himself immune from a rabies-like plague known as KV, accidentally unleashed by a doctor suitably named Alicia Krippin. His world for the past three years has become a graveyard of deserted, overgrown streets, abandoned cars and derelict buildings.
Somehow he has kept his sanity searching for a cure in his basement laboratory filled with glass cages of rabid rodents, who bare their teeth and fling themselves against the unbreakable windows, as if possessed.
With only his pet Alsatian and an assault rifle for company, Neville scours the city, hoping to find a fellow survivor. But the only other occupants are “hives” of snarling mutants who live underground, infected creatures who emerge at night to roam the streets hunting for food.
Neville has turned his home into a fortress, retreating there at night and slamming steel shutters over the windows to watch endless replays of video cartoons. He talks to his dog, and he talks to himself. He talks to the dummies in the tailor's shop down the street.
This is chilling stuff, and the director ratchets up the tension to breaking point: what’s behind that half open door? Who is lurking round the next corner? When is one of the mannequins going to answer back?
Will Smith lives up to the challenge, a believable figure who finds his own humour when he uses the deck of a rusting aircraft carrier in the harbour to tee off and practise his golf swing.
The shocks pile in thick and fast, but it’s in the big set pieces that the film comes into its own: if there are any CGI images involved, production designer Naomi Shohan has me fooled. These really do look like grid-locked streets with one man and his dog moving among the shattered vehicles, while flashback scenes of panic-stricken crowds fighting to get on the ferries are superbly handled.
If you’re up for rollercoaster thrills, this one’s for you – but definitely not for the faint-hearted. Just don’t say you haven’t been warned! |
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