Eu Sou a Lenda

Smith turns in a terrific performance, nailing Neville's angst while allowing room for humor.

I wouldn't dream of giving away the ending, but it's not likely to satisfy either the action crowd or Matheson fans.

I Am Legend is a grenade that goes off when least expected. It has more horror than heart, but it is never boring.

So often, sci-fi is overproduced, but I Am Legend doesn't look like a CGI extravaganza. It looks like an edgy suspense movie shot on the fly in New York City after the fall. And because of that, it's all the more effective.

Will Smith is in prime form.

The herky-jerky script, by Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman, favors vignettes and set pieces over dramatic development, and those damned zombies are everywhere, overwhelming the proceedings with their slobbering and howling.

I Am Legend is a blockbuster like no other, one that finds its grandness in modesty. It's a star vehicle with a star who knows his place in the universe.

I Am Legend is actually about the last man on earth played by one of the last real movie stars on earth.

The movie works well while it's running, although it raises questions that later only mutate in our minds.

I admire the intent of Mr. Smith, who has made it his mission to mix escapist fare with socially relevant material. Legend seems to split the difference and land in the middle of nowhere. That's a lonely place for moviegoers to be.

What should be shattering is often merely intriguing.

Lawrence's direction is patient, solid and suspenseful, and his vision of a lone fellow wandering through the atavistic hulk of Manhattan yields an indelible portrait of post-cataclysmic solitude.

It doesn't serve I Am Legend to give you too much time to think. Better when it's galloping forward at top speed, dodging caribou and translucent zombies and putting the dog in peril.

The Manhattan movie of the year, Francis Lawrence's I Am Legend, offers a stunning glimpse into how the city -- as we know it today -- might look in 2012 if it were abandoned in 2009.

Is going to be bigger than crucifix sales on Judgment Day. Scary, inventive, exciting and breathless adventure.

[Director] Lawrence is pretty good at the spectacular stuff. And he's smart enough to let Smith be Smith. But there's only so much you can do with CGI monsters that don't seem right for this kind of sci-fi scenario.

It's in the last half-hour that I Am Legend imports new elements that both propel the story to its explosive climax and just aren't as compelling as the day-in-the-life story that preceded it.

[Smith's] powerful performance is not enough to save the movie -- initially a potent meditation on loneliness and an absorbing doomsday action movie -- from taking a wrong turn and never getting back on track.

The final smells of creative indifference, and for all that Lawrence and company get right the last thirty seconds are enough to shatter all that good will into devastatingly second-rate pieces.