Sam and Robert Neville (Will Smith) fight to survive the zombie apocalypse in New York City in I AM LEGEND
SEE/CHANGE: I AM LEGEND (Francis Lawrence, 2007)
South Street Seaport
Corner of Front & Fulton Sts.
Saturday, July 12, free, 8:00
www.southstreetseaport.com
www.iamlegendmovie.com
Director Francis Lawrence’s modern-day update of Richard Matheson’s classic 1954 novel, I Am Legend, is a tense, nonstop thriller, liberally adapted by screenwriters Mark Protosevich (The Cell) and Akiva Goldsman (I, Robot). While the book was a claustrophobic masterpiece, the film opens things up dramatically, with Robert Neville (Will Smith), the last survivor of a supposed cancer cure that turned into a deadly virus, riding the streets of New York City every day in a fancy car with his dog, Sam. In addition to hunting wild game that leaps through Midtown, Neville, an army scientist who is still searching for an antidote in his makeshift basement laboratory, kills cells of infected vampiric beings that have more in common with the violent creatures of 28 Days Later than the slow-moving zombies of Night of the Living Dead. Every night Neville barricades himself and Sam into their apartment overlooking Washington Square Park and dreams of the events that brought him to this point, centered on his desperate attempt to save his wife (Salli Richardson) and daughter (Willow Smith, Will’s real-life daughter). I Am Legend was actually filmed in New York, with pivotal scenes shot in and around Madison Square Park, Grand Central Terminal, the South Street Seaport, and a barren Park Ave., lending it a stark, frightening reality. Smith excels as Neville, his eyes quickly shifting from hope to disappointment, from promise to pain, and Lawrence (Constantine, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) does a marvelous job of translating the book’s inner monologue into a postapocalyptic visual nightmare. I Am Legend is screening July 12 at one of the film’s locations, the South Street Seaport, as part of the “Front/Row Cinema: See/Change” series, which continues Wednesday and Saturday nights through August 31. For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings throughout New York City, go here.