HANCOCK
Hey folks. Capone in Chicago here.
A lot of people are going to give this one a pass simply because it's Will Smith doing what I believe he's been destined to do for years: play a superhero. We've sort of been conditioned to do it. I'll go on record about two things regarding HANCOCK. First, I think this is a great idea for a movie. The idea of having a truly "I don't give a fuck" hero in the public eye has been done in some comic books, but I can't think of a time when it's been done in a film with this kind of budget. Second, I have a great deal of respect for nearly all of Peter Berg's works as a director. I thought THE RUNDOWN was a whole lot of fun; FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS might be the best sports movie of the decade; and I even thought THE KINGDOM worked more often than not despite its naive vision of the way the modern political world works. But I'm sorry to report that HANCOCK is lazy filmmaking on the part of both Berg and Smith. Perhaps an equally lazy audiences will eat it up this holiday weekend. In fact, I have no doubt they will. But they're going to be hungry and hour later. HANCOCK feels like two-thirds of what I'm guessing was a better movie at one point. Whether the good stuff was left on the cutting-room floor or whether it ever made it from page to celluloid, I have no idea, but the film feel wildly uneven and incomplete. This is a fractured movie about a guy with a fractured brain.
Smith's Hancock has been living and fighting crime in the Los Angeles area for several years, often causing more damage to people and property than the criminals he's catching. The main reason for his destructive, albeit well intentioned, behavior is rampant drunkenness and overall belligerent feelings toward the people he's trying to protect. Not that citizens like Hancock all the much either. He's kind of a dick. And if you dare to call him an asshole, he might toss you into the stratosphere. After saving the life of Ray, the only do-gooder public relations man in the world (played by Jason Bateman), Hancock and Ray have dinner together and hash out a possible scenario that has Hancock clean up his act and his image (apparently wearing a more traditional superhero costume is part of this process). Ray's wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), doesn't like having Hancock around the house or in Ray's life, but is it because she fears for their son's well being, does she think Hancock is a lost cause, or might it be something else?
The immediate problem with HANCOCK is Smith's choices as an actor. He is simply not convincing as an angry hero. I would never say Will Smith can't play anger or deep emotion; he's done so flawlessly in films like ALI and THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS. But in HANCOCK, it feels more like mugging and pouting, like Smith the rapper pretending to be gangster. It just doesn't feel authentic. He throws back bottles of whiskey like a cartoon wino, swears at little kids, and just acts curmudgeonly. And I wasn't buying any of it. But if the story looked like it was going somewhere, I was willing to stick with it to see if the transformed Hancock was any more interesting than Drunkie the Drunk Guy.
Without giving away what few surprises there are in the film, Hancock discovers that he is not, as he once believed, the only one of his kind. He also finds out why he has no memory beyond the incident that put him in the hospital some 80 years ago (apparently he doesn't age), when he woke up on a gurney in a Miami hospital with a brain injury, and why sometimes sees powers fade. But Berg and writers Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan have absolutely saturated HANCOCK with lame sentimentality and a backstory for our hero that gets more ludicrous the more we hear. The climax set in a hospital might be the most pathetic, cheesy ending I've seen to a movie in a summer filled with such moments. When I started writing this review, I thought I'd be painting the picture of a close call, but as I've been pounding away at the keys, I realize that even my mind is trained to give Will Smith a pass. I think I've just exorcised that instinct, because I now realize that I genuinely did not like HANCOCK. With the exception of some choice outbursts by Smith as well as Bateman's overall performance, the comedy is stale. The effects are impressive enough, but no one will accuse them of being creative or dazzling. But the film's weakest link is it's unnecessarily plodding and disjointed plot. Yep, the more I think about it, the more I realize HANCOCK kinda sucks.
Capone
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