I saw I am Legend at the movie theater the other day.  I hadn’t been to a theater in about 8 months.  More and more I watch movies from home and truly avoid the theaters whenever possible.

The movie was excellent.  After watching the trailers and things, I initially thought that the movie would be 2 hours of just one guy doing strange stuff in New York City all by his lonesome.

Fortunately, it was nothing like that at all.  First, the movie had a whole lot more substance than Will Smith (Legend) goofing on an empty New York City.  The movie is very deep, very compelling and even sucks you in with a sound track that Will Smith makes completely relevant to the plot line at just the right time.

The main song of the movie is Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds”.

Lyrics

Dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin: dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right!

The song, which I knew long before the movie came out has been running through my head non-stop since I saw the movie.  The great thing about the song, Will’s Smith’s performance and the movie itself is that they all mesh together to make a perfect fit that makes the whole thing together better than the sum of its parts.

Great Acting by Will Smith

Will Smith really delivered in this movie.  He played alone for much of the movie, but the movie was cut to move the plot line moving back in time.

The movie is based on a book and the people that have been transformed by a virus are supposed to be essentially vampires in the book.  In the movie, they are not really vampires at all even though they get burned by sunlight or UV rays and they seek blood.

All in all the movie has great action, great depth of acting and its even a bit of a tear jerker as well.  Watch out for the ending.  If you want the happy stuff at the end, wait for the DVD and then make sure you play it with the alternate ending on.  The alternate ending on the DVD is probably the ending they should have stuck with as it would have tied up a number of things in the movie with a cute little bloody vampire virus bow.  Unfortunately, they didn’t do that so you have to walk away from the film performing a number of assumptions off the cuff.

That may get you talking with your friends, but I think it would have been better this time to watch the movie with the bow.

I would like to make a quick deviation. I’ve been listening to a William Gibson book called spook country. I started the book tour for times in the past and never finished it. This time I seem to have gotten hooked on it but I’m still not done.

That said, this evening I watched a couple of Charles Bronson movies. The first one was called Death Wish and the second one was easily called Death Wish II. the first movie was a relatively brooding Charles Bronson movie, the typical thing that you expect. Charles Bronson has a wife and a daughter that are brutally beaten up by three muggers that if all of them home from the grocery store to their apartment.

One of the motors was a young Jeff Goldblum, this movie was made in 1974. Jeff played freak number one.

Charles Bronson’s wife dies in the movie and he decides to take revenge as a vigilante overcoming years of being a conscientious objector even during his service in the Korean War in the medical corps. That may seem a little unlikely, but it’s just a movie.

Now this was probably a B or it may be a B+ movie, but it struck me that this movie like many Charles Bronson movies was a little light on dialogue and extra heavy on very moody music. The first movie however had nothing on the second movie, the sequel which had very very moody music that was also a little psychedelic which is a little strange for a movie that was made in 1982.

The sequel at as might be expected features Charles Bronson again, and again his daughter is brutally beaten up by muggers and he goes vigilante one more time. It’s kind of weird every time he goes vigilante he seems to get happier. In the sequel even proposes marriage to a woman that specializes in writing about rehabilitating prisoners. You can bet that that marriage doesn’t really get too far, he probably would’ve been better off subscribing to one of those wine of the month clubs and Hustler magazine.

The sequel like the original featured a young punk, and this time Laurence Fishburne turned up. The sequel was made in 1982 and that was several years before Laurence Fishburne starred in any of his own movies and decades before he became famous for his role in The Matrix.