Hancock (2008)
Director: Peter Berg
Writer: Vincent Ngo, Vince Gilligan
Starring: Will Smith, Jason Bateman, Charlize Theron, Eddie Marsan, Jae Head
Language: English
Runtime: 90 Minutes approx.
Age Rating: 12A
Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Reviewed by Ross Miller
I sense that Will Smith’s latest movie venture will have people flocking to their local cinema to see it. Couple his fan-favourite and celebrity status with a superhero movie and the people waiting to cash the cheques have a sure box office winner on their hands. It’s just a shame then that once you get passed the novelty of the idea, Hancock is nothing more than an expensive and good looking throwaway movie.
Hancock follows Smith’s title character, a drunk who just happens to have super powers. As he flies around the city saving people's lives the people hate him because of the trail of destruction he leaves behind. But to the rescue comes Jason Bateman’s PR man who wants to help Hancock be loved and appreciated by the public that hate him.
There are many interesting elements to Hancock dotted here, there, and everywhere throughout the movie. There’s stuff about Hancock’s past and how he became the way he is and the questioning of the emotional effect that having superpowers could have on an individual. The filmmakers were also quite creative with superpowers themselves. However, it’s very clear that this is a big studio movie with tons of money thrown at it and it never quite breaks away from that. The ideas, especially those of the origins of these superpowers, are there but you just can’t see them for all the flying rubble caused by the title character, or more specifically, by the technical wizards behind it. Just when new trouble arises and Hancock has to fly in to save the lives of the people involved, the film feels the need to cause a big ruckus by having things explode or crash through buildings.
The film has a weakness that I have started to notice in modern Hollywood fare - it tries to be two movies in one. The first, and better, of the two is Hancock being the hero and saving people’s lives from the likes of oncoming trains, bank robbers, and lots of other dangers that are both shown and alluded to. Although the wow factor of seeing these superpowers does wear off quite quickly, there is an entertainment value to it. However, the second movie really drags the whole thing to a screeching halt as it tries to throw in this origin storyline. As I said, his origin is interesting in concept but the movie never allows it to be fleshed out in any way whatsoever, instead it’s just mentioned a couple of times as a passing thought. I’m not saying I would have actually liked them to go into it full swing with flashbacks and the like, but rather to explain it properly, have the idea in a separate movie or don’t have it at all. Attempting to have this movie be more than what it clearly is just bogs the whole thing down and pretty much wastes any enjoyment you might have gotten from it in the first place.
The big budget behind this flick works both for and against it. For in the sense that it provides for some impressive special effects and action sequences and against in that it’s almost all flash and no substance. The movie may try to staple on this “serious” storyline in the second, inferior, part of the film, but it’s not fooling anyone. This is a brash, loud, in your face, big-budget movie that just wants to show you the cool tricks it’s learned. Did the studios think we would take it very seriously just because it puts on a straight face towards the end? If they did they are sadly mistaken.
There is a plot point, which I won’t give away, that had me rolling my eyes. A big problem with this film is that there is no logically placed villain to oppose our anti-hero and so the film feels the need to, apparently, make one up on the very spot part-way through. In fact more than one; there’s a bank robber who takes Hancock’s wrath more personally than others have, and the other is the aforementioned one that I won't mention. The concept is a decent enough one to begin with, but there seems the producers had no viable place for it to go. Consequently, they seem to have just made things up as they went along and it comes off as a bit of a mess.
I must admit that Will Smith is a likeable actor in pretty much every film he’s in. He has a charismatic presence about him that few actors have and is able to make us root for an asshole we should hate. Smith has come far since his Fresh Prince of Bel Air days and I say more power (pun certainly intended) to him. He makes the movie sufferable in its more weak moments.
Hancock is like a really great looking sports car, the one you’ve had your eye on ever since you were a kid. But after the novelty of it wears off you are left with an annoyance and obstruction of sorts that is only there to look good and do not much else. There’s some fun to be had here and there towards the beginning of it, but as a whole it fails to drive along the way it should. And ultimately, it leaves you wishing you could trade it in for something with a little more staying power.
