2007

Director: Francis Lawrence

- one of the worst things to see is wasted potential and I Am Legend is full of it.  this could have been a great movie, one that would have gone down as an epic masterpiece, but alas what we got was anything but.  i say the thing about potential because you can see glimpses of it throughout the film. 

little bits that seem to want to provide depth of character and story and say something substantial and they poof... they're gone and what we end up with is a rather basic virus destroys human population-leaves but a few survivors-creates zombie type creatures-survivors must learn to live and try to find a way 'out'. not only have we seen it before, but we have seen it before done much better in both 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. 

the film seems to want to take its time at first, but then the last half of the movie just rushes forward as if they were scared that the audience wouldn't be able to handle the slower pace for much longer and needed to get some zombie action in there. this film has been through numerous rewrites and director/actor combinations since 1994 and it looks like they tried too hard to satisfy everyone instead of making the great movie that was staring them in the face.

maybe there is a directors cut out there somewhere, but this movie really needed to be at least 30 minutes longer if not more. ya, it had a huge opening weekend and is making a ton a cash, but the film they made is going to go down as a big average-quality blockbuster rather then the classic must own/see it could have been.