Decided to watch Will Smith’s I am Legend a few nights ago. I knew it was a zombie-ish movie going in, but I was surprised, I think it might be the first religious zombie movie I’ve ever seen.  Since there are potential spoilers in this quasi-movie view, you’ll have to click on the “more” button to read the rest of this post.

All in all, if you’re into modern zombie movies (fast moving and ultra violent, rather then traditional slow and hungry zombies) then you could do a lot worse.

It starts out with Will Smith driving an expensive car around a deserted downtown New York hunting deer with an assault rifle hanging out his driver’s side window, and his dog hanging out the other window.  Cut to various close-up shots of his car (which gets forgotten about after the first 5 minutes of the movie), designer watch, zooms out to show prominently placed McDonalds, Superman and Batman logos, and I’m sure I’m forgetting about at least half of the product placement.  Oh, right — Who can forget the Apple computer logo.

Oddly, most of the obvious product placement died off after the first 15 minutes of the movie.

There were a few plot holes — Will expressed some obsession with trying to cure the disease, and expressed guilt over the whole thing, but his character was just mid-level military, and he wasn’t involved with creating or releasing the disease.  Someone probably dropped some important plot points on the cutting room floor to fit in all the product placement.

With the decision of our main character to kill himself after his dog dies, addition of a new character to save him, the whole thing suddenly turned religious experience. Oddly, Will also apparently forgot the cliche of sleeping with the girl who just saved his life, which is just odd.

Kudos to the writers though, for letting the hero die — Altogether too many movies make the good guys more or less immortal, and only let bad guys or red-shirts die off.

I didn’t go in with high expectations, it was, after all, a Will Smith movie AND a zombie movie, but it didn’t turn out to be all that bad.  I’d rate it a rental.