Review of Hancock (2008) by Markb. — 31 Jul 2008

Don't get me wrong. as Debbie (Leslie Mann) in Knocked Up plaintively put it, "I LIKE Spider-Man"...and Iron Man, and Hellboy...given that every third summer action movie of the last few years seems to have been a superhero flick, what choice do I have? But as enjoyable as many of the big screen Big Two adaptations (DC and Marvel) have been, I mostly prefer my zap-pow-crunches to be delivered from outside the box, because lesser-known adaptations and original screen creations can devise their own mythologies and ask questions that fanboy pressure can bar the established brand names from doing.

I loved Pixar's The Incredibles, which examined the life of a superhero family whose powers were not only unappreciated but outlawed, M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable, which demonstrated how painful the life of a man who doesn't experience serious injuries can be, and the vastly underrated Dark Horse adaptation Mystery Men, an often hysterically funny and surprisingly rather sweet treat dealing with folks who have no superpowers whatsoever but conduct themselves as though they do.

And I WANTED to love Hancock, but here's an example of a movie that would actually have done well to have been a bit LESS ambitious. The title character (Will Smith) is a drunken, self-loathing misanthrope who raises curmudgeonliness to the level of near-psychosis, and whose superhuman acts are roughly equivalent to a Boy Scout who not only drags a little old lady across the street who doesn't want to go, but gets her hit by a car in the process.

Clearly a public relations makeover is in order, and the nicest PR man in film history (Jason Bateman) is up to the task. We know most of this from the trailers, and it's mostly amusing; had Hancock stuck to this simple but sturdy premise, we all would have fared the better for it.

Unfortunately, there is the matter of the much-whispered-about Big Twist, which is not only notably jarring but seems like a cheat because the moviemakers provide too few script clues ahead of time to let the moviegoers have the joy of doing the math.

(I sort of halfway figured it out in advance, but only by realizing that one big-name cast member was suspiciously not being given enough to do, looking at my watch, and saying to myself, "I'll bet THAT changes soon!") Moreover, the shakeup leads to a series of climactic, big-scale action set pieces that director Peter Berg (The Kingdom; the agony-of-defeat anti-sports flick Friday Night Lights) is incapable of staging or shooting.

Robert Wilonsky accurately described Berg's directing style as angry; his first behind-the-camera effort was his best by far--1998's uncompromising, bracingly offensive and very, very funny Very Bad Things, but Berg's problem is that he films every subsequent movie he's made the exact same way, whether the material calls for it or not.

What Hancock DOES prove, however, is Will Smith's unassailable charisma even when playing a totally unlikable character; small wonder he's known as The Man Who Owns July 4th. Smith is great at taking mass audiences to places that maybe they'd rather not go without him; he made 2006's punishing and depressing The Pursuit of Happyness that Christmas season's second biggest hit.

As unsatisfying as Hancock's third act is, Smith still deserves credit for roping in $200 million for a movie that by all rights should've had shorter legs than the director of Iron Man ended up with at the end of Very Bad Things.