I Am Legend

Exclusive DVD Extras:

"Creatures"

"Imagination"

The third official adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel (and the first to carry its name) strips the story down to essentials and focuses on the visceral experience of roaming an empty New York, a metropolitan ghost town slowly being reclaimed by foliage and wildlife (ostensibly escaped from the zoo and running wild through the abandoned streets). And, of course, feral packs of former humans mutated into zombielike creatures by a virus that has swept through humanity like a Biblical cleansing. Will Smith is the sole uninfected human left in New York and he is magnificent in the film, teetering on the edge of sanity as he scavenges the city for food, sends out radio broadcasts, and captures the sun-shy infected for guinea pigs in his experiments to find a cure. He's in everyman mode here -- albeit the pumped up, survivalist only-man everyman -- and it's his humanity, his need for contact (making small talk with the mannequins he's propped up around his neighborhood), and his fearsome rage that makes the film work. Francis Lawrence directs with restraint, even when it comes to the infected. While they look like characters out of a video game in the way the CGI paint box animates over the motion-capture models, Lawrence slowly reveals the nocturnal hunters to be tribal creatures and not simple, unthinking monsters.

The disc features four "animated comics," which use computer manipulation to make stories originally published in the "I Am Legend" graphic novel. The "Two-Disc Special Edition" features an alternate cut that runs a few minutes longer. So often these alternate versions are little more than curiosities, but this one offers a genuinely alternate ending that is more interesting and provocative, better suited to the story and more in tune with the theme (if not the narrative) of the original novel. The second disc also features a digital copy of the theatrical version that can be downloaded (for a limited time) on your PC. Also available in Blu-ray format. HD DVD is due in April.