CITY OF LONELINESS

Do you ever feel lonely in this world? This movie tells a great story about that. You’ll feel loneliness very close to your face. How about if we put another feeling called “fear”? As this movie is not only about loneliness, but also fear. How long can you survive living in loneliness and fear at the same time? Nobody there and you can loose your life anytime. It sounds creepy enough.

The movie is actually brought from a novel entitled “I Am Legend”, which was written in 1954 by Richard Matheson. The novel tells a story about the last man alive in the future of Los Angeles, California. Notice there’s a difference in the city where the event took place. The movie’s version is in New York but the novel’s is in Los Angeles. Previous movies which had been adapted from that novel are The Last Man on Earth (1964) and The Omega Man (1971).

Directed by Francis Lawrence, “I am Legend” tells a story of a virus that wiped out the entire city. Well, not entirely, as few people were immune. People never stop looking for a way to create a better living. One of the ways is through science and experiments. Hoping to find a cure for cancer, the experiment turned out to be a total chaos. It produced nasty plague which was capable of transforming humans into savage and vicious mutant zombies or vampires.

The outbreak of the plague actually took place in the year of 2009, but the actual struggle begins in 2012. During that time, the plague had wiped out the whole humanity and caused symptoms of vampirism to the people where they lost their consciousness and became blood-thirsty creatures. They couldn’t stand daylight and one single ray of sunlight could burn them to the death. So they could only go out at night.

Robert Neville (played amazingly by Will Smith) happened to be one of the last human beings who are immune from the virus’s effects, and lived alone in New York City. He was a scientists (although he didn’t look like one) who also had a military background. Neville tried to use his scientist’s intelligence and military’s strength to survive as long as he could in a city, which was no longer looked like a city. Through flashbacks, Neville’s past slowly revealed. The memories of his family and being separated from them were pushing his will and draining his spirit at the same time.

Neville only had one mission, which was to find a way to reverse the effect caused by the virus using his own blood which contains immunity substance. He had to use the time efficiently to build strong defenses around his house, dispose vampire corpses, and gather supplies as much as he could when he faced loneliness at daylight. When the sunset came, he had to protect himself from the horde of vampires that lurked the night searching for any humans that still walked the earth. The mutant zombies, who used to be humans, roamed the night watching every step Neville made, waited patiently for him to make a fatal mistake.

One thing that could ease his mind was a company of his best friend, a German shepherd dog named Samantha (the dog’s real name is Abbey, trained by Steve Berens). Neville and his family had Samantha since she was little. She had grown up to be a strong and smart companion for him. They tried their best to protect each other and comforted each other’s mind, until something really terrible happened.

As Neville learned about his foes, he knew that the end was near. He knew that those monsters were also studying his every move. The city now had its own population and he’s not a part of it. The legend had been reborn. It’s now up to him whether he could reverse the population back as the last hope of all humanity rest on his shoulder.

Ivan the Freelancer