Fun and interesting for the first part - messy and uneven in the second (SPOILERS)

Rating: Null/10 (11 September 2008)

Like all decent American cities, Los Angeles has its own superhero it can call upon for help when things get bad. Unfortunately for the city, their hero is a John Hancock - a drunk, homeless, @sshole who does more damage than good when he "helps". This could all change though whenever he saves the live of PR man Ray Embrey, who in return offers to help improve the public image of Hancock.
Everyone has already said it but I will repeat it here by saying that half of Hancock is a really good film but unfortunately the second half doesn't deliver on this. For the first third/half of the film the concept is that which was marketed - a "superhero" who is also essentially a jerk. This produces a few laughs and a quite interesting idea that is a welcome change from the effects-heavy summer films where the heroes battle one another with effects being the focus at the expense of plot. However, the film does not carry on down this road for long before the "plot" kicks in.
Now for me I thought the "plot" was going to be the same as the "@sshole hero" plot but seemingly not. Instead we have some nonsense rushed out about the paired immortals and a gang of bank robbers who are important in terms of the conclusion but otherwise make no sense at all. It is a shame because the end result is a film that is an uneven mess, despite having good points. The comedy is what I was looking for but it moves too quickly from this into CGI nonsense, plots about immortals and a conclusion that is forced to be too dramatic for characters I have hardly come to care about and comes before I had time to get used to the "new" tone of the second half.
The film is a Smith vehicle and he is one of the few stars that can still open a film. In the better moments of the film he is very good (ie before Mary reveals herself) but in the second half he is let down by the film; so although he does get his character and the emotions right, the problems with the material mean he wastes his time. Theron is so-so and overdoes her part in the first half with her not-so-subtle looks and comments, before inexplicably becoming a vamp to show that she has powers too. Bateman is his skillful comic self when dealing with Smith in the first half of the film but by the end I was surprised by how little use the film made of him. Head is a typical annoying kid, while Marsan's villain is too obvious - although he is not helped by the total lack of background to his character.
Given I have said it about twenty times already, you will probably have got that I think this is a film of two halves. The first is not perfect but it is funny and nice to see a major blockbuster subvert the genre in this way (not that it is the first film to do it). However the sudden change of gear in the middle is jarring and the film never recovers from it, not that it helps itself by the jumps in logic and convenient narrative steps, none of which work. Almost a good film but the longer it goes on, the lesser it becomes.