Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

Richard Matheson’s novel I AM LEGEND is a classic. There’s no other way to describe it. Beautifully written, stark and terrifying at times, with an underlying sadness that elevates it above most genre material, it has been adapted loosely to the screen before as both THE LAST MAN ON EARTH and THE OMEGA MAN. And now, with the release of Warner’s new mega-budget adaptation, the first to use the original title, the book has once more served as vague inspiration rather than exact source material, a fact that will no doubt frustrate fans of the book.

But if you can set aside the original book, then I AM LEGEND is a surprisingly solemn Christmas release, a showcase for Will Smith as an actor, and just one of the big-studio bummers that will stuff multiplexes this season. I’m loving it, but I have to wonder how this many dour, dark character explorations all got greenlit at the same time... must have been a very specific mood, a very specific sort of industry-wide reaction to something. I’m not going to give away what this film does or doesn’t do in its final act. I’m not even going to play coy with it. I went into this cold. I knew I wasn’t going to see the book. There’s an integrity to the world that Robert Neville lives in, and Francis Lawrence does some really sharp, smart work as a director. The first hour is pretty much flawless in the way it draws you into Neville's life. It’s CAST AWAY with the threat of monsters. The hint of monsters. The mere suggestion of monsters. It’s in the way Will Smith treats the darkness, the care he takes to keep himself safe. I like the meticulous way Lawrence and credited screenwriters Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman etch the daily life that Neville has tried to build for himself. And I like the way Smith plays it. I think he’s really good. I think he does everything the script asks him to do and more. He makes even the most on-the-nose moments in the script feel natural because of how completely he commits to what he’s doing here. He’s thought through Neville’s shaky mental state at each step of how he plays him. His choices after one particular turning point in the film are reckless but completely understandable. And there’s one heartbreaking “conversation” he has that I think is one of his best moments on film.

Yeah, there is a lot of CGI in the film. Dash Mihok is credited in the film, and I had to ask one of the Warner publicists about it. Turns out, Mihok (a character actor familiar from roles in films like THE THIN RED LINE and HOLLYWOODLAND and ROMEO + JULIET) is the performance capture model for the Alpha Dark Seeker. He’s not quite a fully rounded character, but I liked the way he was used. It was never overt, and you’re left to decide for yourself just how this society of creatures works. But by making one particular creature stand out, it allows Lawrence to stage his big set pieces more effectively, giving them just enough focus. If pressed, I’d say the stuff involving the monsters is the least effective material in the film, but I still think it’s well-shot, well-cut, tense and involving. They are relentless and animal, and I think the way events unfold here, you can read into it a certain amount of room that’s been left open for details of Matheson’s book. I think these things are definitely afraid of Neville... aware of Neville.

I saw the film in IMAX (and, no, the six-minute DARK KNIGHT clip was not in front of the press screening I went to, so I’ll be going back to see it once the film opens tomorrow) and the thing that really struck me is how much the film benefits from the sound system in the IMAX theater. Holy crap. It makes sense, of course... that’s one of the most important things that makes the IMAX experience more physical... the enormous speaker array behind the screen, surrounding you, so you feel like you’re sitting IN a speaker in the best moments. So much of the sound design that Lawrence and his team did in this is directional, experiential, designed to freak out you, and in IMAX, it really works. I have to drive an hour and twenty minutes (minimum) to get to an evening screening at The Bridge, all the way from Northridge using the 118 and the 405, and it’s a giant miserable pain in the ass to do it. But I go anyway because I think the viewing is that much better. Yes, I can wait and see a movie at home, and I AM LEGEND will still be an interesting film with some great images and a really strong lead performance when I have it on DVD. But I’ll never be able to reproduce the aural sensations of seeing the film the way I did tonight. If I’m going to make the effort for a place that goes the extra distance for projection standards, it’s nice to see something make full use of the technology.

More reviews as the morning continues...

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles