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Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Hancock: A heroic mess
At one point in Hancock, the title character talks about how he was going to see the movie Frankenstein at about the same time he discovered his superpowers.
That reference may be more fitting than the filmmakers intended. Hancock is a Frankenstein monster of a movie. Parts of it are wild and fun; other parts are lumbering and ungainly. The uneven second half has made people unjustly compare the film to gargantuan misfires like Last Action Hero and Wild Wild West. Unlike those movies, however, Hancock works, partly because it’s such a strange animal.
The movie starts out as you might expect from the ads: Hancock (Will Smith) is a superhero who isn’t much of a hero. Sure, he usually stops the bad guys and saves the day, but he makes a heck of a mess doing it. When he stops a vehicle full of armed men, he does so by digging his feet into the highway and ripping the road apart.
Even worse than his destructiveness is Hancock’s attitude. He doesn’t give a rip what people think of him or his “heroics.” When he saves a motorist from getting hit by a train, he tells the other drivers, “Ok, you people who were blocking the intersection? Y’all are idiots.”
Enter public relations man Ray Embrey (Jason Batman), who’s fascinated by Hancock and wants to redeem him. His solution: have Hancock turn himself in to prison, allow the crime rate to skyrocket and let Hancock do his stuff when he’s needed most. Most of this material is very funny and clever.
That’s only about half the movie, though. At a crucial point, Hancock becomes an origin story, and Charlize Theron, playing Ray’s wife, becomes much more central to the plot. It’s a rough shift in tone. Like a car that’s suddenly been jammed into the wrong gear, Hancock loses momentum, lurching forward when it’s not sputtering to a stop.
Part of the problem is that the screenplay by Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan isn’t fully worked out. After establishing a fun and creative idea of the shiftless hero, the movie more or less drops it and morphs into a bizarre, half-baked story that makes less sense the more you think about it. This is the rare summer movie that could actually stand to be longer. Running only about 90 minutes, Hancock might have been better had it had time to develop the ideas it forms in the second half.
For all the second half’s mistakes, though, it’s still weirdly fascinating. Theron brings a fierce yet touching presence to the movie, and Smith’s charisma is, as ever, irrepressible. It’s fun to see him put a spin on his unflappable persona. Peter Berg, a director with undervalued talent, keeps the energy level high, even when the film loses focus.
Hancock is imperfect, but I’m much more interested in a movie that aims high and sometimes misses, than one that aims low and plays it safe, like The Incredible Hulk. This movie may not be super, but it’s heroic enough.
GRADE: B
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