I am Legend

Released: 2007
Horror Sci-Fi
Starring: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Salli Richardson
Director: Francis Lawrence
Running Time: 101 minutes
Rated PG 13 for some scary images

The breakdown:
Yet another version of the novel by Richard Matheson.  This one is a bit different from the book of course.  In this version the main character played by Smith is a smart scientist trying to find a cure for the virus that has either killed most of humanity or turned them into a zombie/vampire.  (They look dead, not super smart, they can't speak, they try to suck your blood or eat you, and they can't stand the daylight.  It's really a mix of both to me.)

WARNING!  Talk about the ending in this movie as well as the novel that inspired it, so if you don't want to ruin it for yourself don't read this one.......

In this version, Emma Thompson plays a scientist/researcher who's come up with a "cure" for cancer with a vaccine.  Of course, everyone gets the shot, but something goes terribly wrong.  Almost everyone turns into a vampire/zombie from the injection.  For some reason either by a natural immunity to it, or by luck and they haven't gotten bit or killed, a few survivors are left in the country.  Will Smith plays a military scientist whose family didn't make it to safety in time.  He's the only one, or seems to be, in New York City.  He plays a radio broadcast every day from the top of a building to see if he can get any one left to come to him, and for years he has no response.  He's working in his lab for a cure and sometimes gets live specimens to test on.  He travels for food by day with his dog and hides in his home at night to survive.  It's been years since the plague hit and eventually he finds an uninfected woman and child for company.  He has to take care of them as well, but at first he likes the company.  He loses his dog to a zombie bite and eventually captures the wrong live zombie (possibly the girlfriend/wife of a ferocious male zombie).  He has some close calls and sooner or later the zombies find out his hiding spot and get past all his protections. 
He's just found a cure when the zombies break in, and sends the woman and child off into the country to find a safe zone where most survivors seem to be gathering.  He hopes with the serum he gives them, humanity can be restored.  He stays behind as bait to a ton of zombies that have a big beef with him.  He pulls the pin on his trusty grenade and kills himself along with a ton of zombies. 

Ah now, with this movie version, since I know the original book and have seen other film versions of the story, this one doesn't rate so high with me.  I give it only 3 out of 5 ticket stubs because it did have some scary scenes, and the special effects were good, but it dumbed down the zombies a bit too much from the original book.  It could've been more dynamic had they made the zombies smarter.

This movie version, like all of them, of course, completely differs from the short novel.
Let me say how important this story was to pop culture and movies first.
It was written in 1954 and has had 3 different versions released in movie form.  None of them stay true to the original story though.  The Last Man on Earth in 1964 (even had the screenplay written by Matheson but by the end it differed so much he didn't want his real name on the project), The Omega Man in 1971, and I am Legend in 2007.  It was the inspiration for the Night of the Living Dead movies by George Romero.  It influenced Stephen King, and is a fantastic story to read if you've never had the chance.  Though Richard Matheson refers to the beings in his story as vampires, they had a very strong effect for the idea of zombies to get popular.  For the book review anytime I say vampire or zombie alone I really mean both because they resemble both.  I will try to keep references limited to vampire/zombie though.

In the novel, the main character, Robert Neville is just an office worker with a wife.  He lives a normal life in L.A. but pretty soon changes come across the country and people start to get sick with some new illness.  You either get sick and become a zombie without dying first, or the dead (unburied bodies) get infected and become zombies. The man loses his wife and all of his friends and co-workers through death or him having to kill them himself, except for one.  His co-worker becomes the lead zombie in town and is hellbent on killing the main character.  He's been able to evade Neville and is a strong nemesis.  Neville is depressed and turns to alcohol for a while to help him deal.  Neville goes out during the day, when it's safe, carrying garlic with him as repellent and collects what he can to survive.  He also kills as many enemies as possible.  At night, he hears them wandering the streets and they know where to find him, but they can't enter his well protected home.  They are not dumb like a lot of zombie characters we know of today.  They speak and travel together.  It's interesting how his co-worker was his friend in life and they used to carpool together for work, but since his co-worker got infected, he's really hated Robert and just wants him dead.
He begins getting books from the library and researching medicine/research/science to learn what might have caused this illness to happen.  He discovers through his own long and slow medical research that the illness started with a bacteria that could infect living and dead tissue.  He is immune, but would like to cure what is making what's left of humanity sick. 
He meets a woman named Ruth in a field and thinks she is a zombie/vampire at first, but she's out during the day so she must be human.  These things usually hide during the day.  He captures her and enjoys her company slowly trusting her.  He has been alone for three years before meeting Ruth.  He becomes suspicious of her when she flinches at talk of killing zombie/vampires, but if she was a true survivor she wouldn't mind killing them as you have to survive yourself, especially travelling alone like she was.  He has taken Ruth home but is upset when he wakes one night finding her getting ready to leave.  He questions her as to why she's leaving, but since he's been alone so long and he starts telling her about his past they console one another and she stays.  He wants a blood sample from her, and she gives it to him, but just when he sees the results (she is indeed infected) she hits him over the head and knocks him unconscious.  When he wakes up he sees a note Ruth left for him.  Seems that the infected are getting to the point where they can tolerate small amounts of sunlight (like she could) and want to rebuild a society.  She's part of the group that wants to restart the world the way that they are without being "cured".  Most of them hate and fear Neville because he has killed so many of them (including the true vampire/zombies that were infected only after they died) and they hate him because of his desire to eradicate them for his former way of humanity (non-infected).  Kind of like a strange genocide or racism if you ask me.  Anyway, Ruth warns Robert that her people are coming to get him and kill him.  She doesn't hate or fear him, but she's not trying to stop her people either.  She tells him to get out of his house and escape somewhere, but he doesn't believe they will be able to capture him.
They are better than he thought they were, they capture him and he wakes up in prison.  Ruth visits him and tells him she is a high ranking member of the new society.  She says she's been working with these new society members from before the time she met him and was basically trying to get to know him to learn best how to capture him.  She believes that he needs to be executed like all the other members, but she gives him pills (I believe are strong enough to kill him before the painful execution) saying that it will make things easier for him.  Neville has been badly injured and accepts that he is indeed going to die, there is no escape at this point.  He asks Ruth not to let this new society become terrible and heartless.  She kisses him goodbye and leaves his cell.
He goes to the window overlooking all the infected waiting for him to be publicly executed.  Their reaction to seeing him is strong and they are excited to see him die, some of them probably didn't believe he was real or really captured.  Somehow he understands what the new society believes and how they feel.  He recognizes that vampires used to be legend in his society, just a story with no proof.  He realizes that a new form of human or "race" has been created due to this illness and that people are just adapting to it.  He is a threat to what they believe since he is trying to kill all of them so that more "normal" pre-infection society can survive and continue to dominate the country/world.  He says to himself out loud after he swallows the pills, "[I am] a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever.  I am legend." 

I give the book (though it's really short) a 5 out of 5 for it being incredibly original at the time it was written.  It's influence continues to permeate today and it's really interesting to read.  The main character never found another living human being the whole time of the story that wasn't infected.  He was truly (possibly) the last human being on Earth.  Robert Neville was a very intriguing character.