Hancock starts promisingly enough. Smith plays John Hancock, a most unlikely superhero. When we meet him, he looks more like a homeless person sleeping off his latest binge than a crime fighter with super powers. But when some heavily armed hoodlums engage in a high-speed chase with the cops, Hancock's on the scene. Only problem is Hancock ends up doing more harm than good. Sure he stops the bad guys but he also destroys a freeway and smashes numerous buildings. Plus he's got a foul disposition. He's even rude to kids. So crowds boo him, the D.A. wants to arrest him, and the media has a field day bashing him. Basically he's a public relations nightmare.
You got an image problem and I can help... Hancock (Columbia)
That's where Ray Embrey ( Arrested Development's Jason Bateman) comes in. Hancock saves Embrey's life and out of gratitude, Embrey, a PR guy who wants to save the world, offers to give Hancock an image makeover and a superhero brand identity. Embrey convinces Hancock to be humble, apologize for all the damage, and to go to jail and wait quietly until the police and the public realize how badly they really need him.
Being humble doesn't sit well with Hancock (Columbia)
Now all this is fine and dandy. Nothing brilliant but a funny premise. There's cleverness in the notion of a superhero who lives in the real world and finds that no one much wants his kind of superhero with an attitude. The potential for humor is good and Smith -- playing a foul-mouthed, drunken jerk -- is a change of pace that's milked nicely in the early goings. But then something goes horribly wrong. Writers Vy Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan serve up a ridiculous twist and then stage a painfully drawn out and emotionally misguided third act. Although the film clocks in at barely 90 minutes, the overwrought climax feels like it goes on forever. Not only that but they throw out every last thread of logic as Hancock's superpowers start to fluctuate based on nothing more than the writers' whim. (I'd be more specific but I don't want to give away the "big twist.") I'm willing to give a superhero film some leeway in terms of realism but a film has to remain true to its own inner logic and this one keeps changing the ground rules. In addition, the back story they give Hancock to explain his "origin" is not only lame but unimaginative and unsatisfying. It would have been better to leave it a mystery.
This is a film that needed to make up its mind about what it wanted to be and then to stick to that. The writers simply didn't have the confidence to stick to a simpler but more effective story - a story about a surly and unappreciated superhero living in the modern world where people want to sue you for damages even when you've just saved their lives. That had great potential but Ngo and Gilligan waste that potential in the first 30 minutes. In addition they fail to mine the superhero genre and its mythology for anything that pays off. In a summer of comic book action heroes, this could have served up a fresh, satiric take on the genre and given us an anti-superhero film. At moments in the beginning, Hancock even seemed to be taking swipes at the ridiculous excesses and mindless destruction of the typical Hollywood action film -- now there's something worth making fun of. But all involved chicken out and in the end, and Hancock delivers a standard (or should I say substandard) action tale with a heroic Will Smith in the end.
While I place most of the blame for the film's failure on the writers, director Peter Berg has to shoulder some guilt as well. The writers are both relative novices, but Berg has a more than a few years experience under his belt as both an actor and director so he should have known better. His biggest failing in his inability to find the proper tone and style for this oddball superhero film. The beginning is almost slapstick, and there's a whale gag that's not far off from something Reno 911 would have done. But Berg also endows the film with an almost gritty sense of contemporary city life as he depicts a bank job gone wrong and some nasty gunplay that paralyzes the downtown area. Then there's some downright low vulgar humor, mostly involving putting things where the sun never shines and making gay jokes about men in tights. And finally Berg wants to wring grand emotions and epic heroism out of the final scenes, and those are things that the film simply doesn't earn the right to.
My disappointment is intensified by the fact that Berg directed one of my all time favorite black comedies Very Bad Things in which he displayed a masterful sense of tone. In that film he constantly walked s tightrope and always managed the right balance of comedy and shock. Hancock could have used such clever maneuvering as well but this time Berg fails to deliver. Berg shoots scenes in unnecessarily tight close ups that seem designed simply to make the transition to the small screen better. Berg just can't make all the different pieces of this film fit together in any meaningful or coherent manner.
Jason Bateman and Will Smith in Hancock (Columbia)
The budget for Hancock was reportedly $150 million, which is like adding insult to injury. What a waste of money. The film's bloated excess stands out in even bolder relief because I recently saw a Japanese film from the New York Asian Film Festival called Dai Nipponjin (Big Man Japan) . That film served up a hilarious mockumentary by Japanese comedian Hitosi Matumoto. The film follows a middle-aged loser who seems like the most boring guy on the planet, and who engenders everyone's hostility. Then we finally discover that when giant monsters attack Japan the guy turns into a 500 foot tall superhero. That film worked so well because it maintained the driest of humor throughout and cleverly explored what being a superhero in the real world could be like - dealing with an unappreciative public, coping with sponsors, and trying to maintain a private life despite the public one. By comparison, this low-budget absurd little film kicks butt on this big budget Hollywood behemoth. In the case of these two films, less is more.
Smith will probably bring in a huge opening weekend for the film and he'll probably emerge as unscathed as Hancock's bulletproof body. But even Smith's easy charm shows strains at times as the actor struggles through the most unconvincing scenes. There are some moments when he looks downright constipated as he tries to force out some of the film's poorly conceived dialogue and emotions. Bateman also proves a fairly resilient actor as he tries to maintain a deadpan response to the chaos around him. Berg put him to better use though in The Kingdom where his comedic style played off of that film's gritty violence. But Charlize Theron, as Embrey's wife, doesn't survive this wreckage very well. She doesn't have the lightness of touch that her male co-stars can summon up and she ends up struggling with a character that never makes much sense.
Charlize Theron's character shows initial hostility toward Hancock (Columbia)
Hancock (rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and language) faces no competition this weekend from any new Hollywood film openings. The only major studio film going up against it is the girlie film Kit Kittredge: An American Girl . So with a 4th of July weekend free and clear, and people needing to escape the heat, Hancock will probably do well and that will only encourage Hollywood to continue making this kind of poorly written crap. I urge you to seek refuge at Landmark with any of a trio of good films opening ( Savage Grace, Encounters at the End of the World and Gonzo: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson ) or if a big action film is what you're craving go see Wanted - seeing that even for a second time would be far more pleasurable than sitting through Hancock once. And both film essentially serve up lead characters who possess unexpected powers and have to move through the modern world.
Companion viewing: The Incredibles, Dai Nipponjin, Very Bad Things, The Kingdom, Wanted
P.S. I was just reminded that Hancock will be distributed in 4K for digital cinema. Now for most of us that will mean absolutely nothing especially since the film is so bad that it's not worth seeing. However, if you are a tech geek this might be of interest since the current standard of resolution for digital projection is 2K. Now whether your eye can tell a difference remains to be seen but the technology is supposed to provide a much higher resolution and detail.
