Great Will Smith movie!

Rating: 8/10 (27 March 2012)

"Hancock" was a very solid effort all around.
Will Smith is John Hancock, with most of the powers we usually associate with Superman. But he is a social misfit, seemingly with no direction in his life. He is a loner, living in a trailer near the ocean, and seems to spend most of his spare time with a bottle of booze to his mouth. As a result, when the cops seek him out to help, he flies erratically, shearing off parts of buildings in the process, tends to tear up the road with his landings, and destroys cars, trucks, and trains that happen to be nearby. As a result the public has a love/hate feeling about Hancock, and lately mostly hate.
Hancock doesn't know his history. Eighty years earlier he woke up in a Miami hospital and didn't know who he was. When it was time to release him he was asked to "put your John Hancock here" and assumed his name was John Hancock! Because of his superpowers he doesn't age as a normal person would.
Into the picture comes Jason Bateman as P.R. expert Ray Embrey. Ray sees an opportunity to polish Hancock's image, to make him more valuable to society and turn him into a gentleman. Part of that was for Hancock to submit to prison time for all the things he had destroyed, and in the process learn to quit drinking.
The third key character is Charlize Theron as Ray's wife, Mary Embrey. We notice that she is very hesitant when she first meets Hancock at her home, but we don't know why. But it becomes an important part of the story.
So here we have 3 very good actors in Smith, Bateman, and Theron. They create very interesting characters and the movie is very entertaining. While it starts out looking more like a broad comedy, it in fact ends up having a nice dramatic story embedded as well.