Hancock vs. Inadequacy, drugs, booze and ultimately himself

Rating: 6/10 (7 August 2015)

This movie could've been better, and with the lack of a strong second act it just ends up being slightly above average. The opening scene with Hancock drunkenly waking up from a bender after a kid informs him of a shootout between cops and Asian gang members during a high speed pursuit sets the tone for the style of crime fighting Hancock undertakes. Before leaving his park bench, he gropes at a random woman and grabs his liquor to go take on the bad guys. He does stop the gang members but not without causing a huge amount of collateral damage to buildings, roads and presumably injuries to people unlucky enough to be caught in his drunken highway showdown.
Hancock meets Ray Embry, a corporate image consultant, when he saves Ray from a collision from an oncoming train at a railroad crossing. Hancock tosses Ray's car upside down to get it off the tracks and derails the train as well. Hancock is invited by a grateful Ray back to his house for dinner, where he meets Ray's wife and son. He is slowly convinced by Ray to turn himself into the police to stand trial for the collateral damage caused by his heroics.
Hancock goes to a maximum security lockup with the assumption that crime will escalate quickly enough for Los Angeles to want Hancock released. He slowly sobers and is released to help police confront a group of heavily armed bank robbers and rescue a wounded officer. The second act deals with the origin of Hancock's powers and the attempts by one of the former bank robbers and several other inmates placed in jail by Hancock to get revenge. It descends into a maelstrom of CGI-crafted battles and a vague mythological origin to compensate for lack of a decent back story. The idea of a superhero with struggling with alcoholism and rehabilitating his image sounds but this suffers suffers from weak character development and some shoddy acting from Charlize Theron. Will Smith is good as Hancock, but that isn't saying much since he just seems either exhausted/hungover or emotionally distant through most of the movie. Jason Bateman gives a good performance as the nice guy trying to do a friend a favor, and this is considering he's usually the straight guy in these Frat Pack movies lately.