Yesterday, we rented the movie “I am Legend” from the DVD Play Kiosk box at my local PW Supermarket. This is the first time we use this srevice. I thought it’s a pretty good business model. The customer gets the convenience of renting and returning the DVD from/to the place they shopped – supermarket. The supermarket gets the customers to return to the store the next day for more shopping experience. Of course, if the customers don’t want to return the next day, there is a $1/day penalty. Very nice business model – win win for everyone.

Now back to the movie. “I am Legend” is about this guy who managed to survive the biggest catastrophe of the man kind – a viral outbreak that wiped out majority the people and turn a minority into “darkseekers” – vampire-like, super-aggressive human that only come out at night to hunt on the not-yet infested people or other animals. The movie evolved from the a calm, boring scenario like “Castaway” where the “only” survivor lives an extemely lonely, isolated kind of life, roaming around the empty New York streets littered with abandoned cars and weeds. As the story goes, the audiences start to discover the “dark” side of the silence in the day time. At that point, the movie turns into a horror movie. Will Smith becomes the Legend due to his discovery of the serum and the sacrifice of his own life to save the serum.

I think Will Smith’s acting is very good – believable – in this movie. The “nightseekers’ are clearly computer graphics and not as believable – too plastic. Overall, the movie has entertaining value and is not bad for people who enjoy scifi and horror movies. The empty New York street scenes are very rstrange – hard to imagine New York to be that quiet. Furthermore, the movie makes people think what is like to be the survivors of the earth where the majority of the people disappear suddenly. Perhaps, a run-away man-made virus is one the of the ways to make human extinct like the dinosaurs. Hopefully, we are still a long way from extinction.