Less than super

Rating: 6/10 (4 July 2008)

"Hancock" is the summer's dark horse. Early trailers made it seem like a superhero spoof, then it looked like a dark comedy, then an action extravaganza. It's hard to tell what this movie is and the news of all the directors and studios who left the project, the fact that the subject matter has been called controversial and an extreme contrast to your usual summer movie experience, and that the MPAA has "R-ed" this movie twice before the studio finally went back and made major edits to get the PG-13 all come into question as this movie gets the coveted huge July 4 weekend audience all to itself. It's a major gamble, but having Will Smith in your movie is a good card to play.
Smith stars as John Hancock, a boozing, vulgar, misunderstood superhero living a life of solitude in Los Angeles. He tries to do the right thing but usually every heroic save also creates some horrible damage that leaves him continually shunned by the public. Not that he cares. A life of being the only one of his kind has given him a tough demeanor and a thick skin, but then he saves the life of a PR man named Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman). Ray is eternally grateful and offers to take up Hancock as his client to the chagrin of Ray's wife (Charlize Theron), who believes Hancock can't be fixed.
Every once in a while a movie comes along that I can only describe asÂ…nice. I wish it were better but I admired it for trying to do something new and felt there were some good scattered moments in a sadly unpleasing whole. The movie is at its most entertaining when Hancock is being an asshole, flying through the air with a whiskey bottle in hand, toying with a car full of criminals, or throwing a washed up whale back in the ocean or a little kid far into the air. It's funny stuff, as is a prison fight that ends with a guy's head up another guys ass.
But the movie is really just a half-formed idea. Hancock's origin story is meager and forgettable and his vulnerabilities are lacking. There's no tension in anything that's happening because everything just seems like a cake walk to Hancock. He easily thwarts bank robberies and saves people in distress but that's really it. You want to see him go up against incredible odds or a super villain but the closest thing to is some one-dimensional thug bent on revenge. The screenplay, by Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan, seems so desperate to create real drama that it introduces a superhero wife for Hancock and then manufactures some lame excuse for why she is the worse thing for him. It all leads to an ending that turns depressingly talky, uninteresting, and just leaves a lot of loose ends.
The special effects are serviceable. Hancock flies. Hancock throws people and things up in the air. He lands with a ground-breaking thud. Just where is the wow factor? This movie cost over $100 million dollars to make but there is nothing cool that stands out or shows any kind of ingenuity on the part of the filmmakers. I said it earlier but Will Smith is the best thing this movie has. He's a charismatic guy who knows how to make a surly, unlikable character seem like he has a soul under all the glum boozing. His performance reminded me of Robert Downey Jr.'s performance in "Iron Man," though the material was 100 times better with Downey. Bateman isn't given much to do here and even though it's good to see Theron playing sexy again for a change, she spends most of the movie giving off an iciness which is pretty off-putting.
There is going to be speculation that all the edits to bring the movie down to a PG-13 is the reason behind "Hancock's" flaws. It could very well be the reason why this movie feels more like an idea than an actual fleshed-out screenplay. It's tame when it should be super. And yet the movie sort of works when it's having fun with the character. So I was torn between recommending or not and all I can really say is.. it's nice.