HANCOCK Columbia Pictures
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: C
Directed by: Peter Berg
Written By: Vy Vincent Ngo, Vince Gilligan
Cast: Will Smith, Jason Bateman, Charlize Theron, Eddie Marsan, Johnny Galecki, Thomas Lennon, Jae Head
Screened at: NYC, AMC Lincoln Square, 6/26/08
Opens: July 2, 2008 Moviegoers across our fair country have accepted, nay even embraced, the idea that summertime calls for light fare: books we can read at the beach, theater that leaves us feeling good, and big-studio movies that allow us to check our brains at the door. Prone as we critics are to seek out indies that help us to explain the human condition, there are exceptions that give us hope for big-studio fare. Pixar studio’s “Wall-E” is one major offering this summer that appears to have almost unanimous critical acceptance. But for the most part, we understand that the megaplex will offer the likes “Hellboy 2” and “The Incredible Hulk,” “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” and “The Love Guru.” Thanks to Mike Myers’s vanity project in that last citation, “Hancock” cannot be called for worst movie of the summer. However, even by action-adventure standards, namely those movies targeted to the 16-25 year-olds, Peter Berg’s creation scripted by Vy Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan, is a dud. You’d think that with a budget of $150 million, money that could go quite a way toward hiring hundreds more Wall-E’s to clean up our waste, you could dream up a movie that does not assault us with CGI and stunt work involving a human being’s ability to take off like a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings with a single bound, and who, more powerful than a locomotive, cannot make a soft landing in L.A. Every time the title character, a sometimes airborne superhero played by Will Smith, sets himself back down on terra firma, he uproots enough concrete to assure employees of companies with government road-repair contracts of steady jobs even during our current recessionary times. Aside from a clever twist that I couldn’t see coming at just about midpoint, director Berg (“The Kingdom”) must have figured that the public would eat up a film with an original idea, and it is an intriguing one: that a superhero who has lived for centuries without aging—just as do Captain Marvel, Superman, Wonder Woman, maybe Spiderman—would be so sick and tired of his job that he would drink himself into a stupor, not bother shaving, and take naps not at a super-home but on a park bench. A fallen superhero, not bad. Premise notwithstanding, the hackneyed car crashes, train wrecks, building destructions, automatic artillery still dominate the picture while the human angle, which should have been exploited more and with greater subtlety, exists as a throwaway. The dreary explanation of Hancock’s origin sounds like pure gobbledygook. As for the human angle: We first meet Hancock (Will Smith) sleeping off a hangover on a park bench, called an a-hole by a kid as he will be called many times throughout the story. Having aroused the public to dislike him because everywhere the superhero goes to stop crimes, he creates wreckage, Hancock is about to get a makeover by a public relations executive, Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), whose life he had saved albeit at the cost of wrecking cars and a locomotive in the process. Embrey teaches Hancock to say “Good job” to police, a start toward gaining the public’s affection, and to try to do his superwork without so much collateral damage. If Hancock is to change radically though, it will not be through another man’s counsel but through the chemistry he develops with Embrey’s gorgeous wife, Mary (Charlize Theron). Almost needless to say, there a kid in the picture, Aaron (Jae Head), who adores Hancock and is about the only guy who doesn’t call him an a-hole. On the other hand, Eddie Marsan plays Red, a villain who winds up in jail thanks to a Hancock intervention during a crime, and who is determined to locate the hero’s kryptonite and do him in. “Hancock” tries to appeal to everyone, mixing genres so quickly that the movie cannot bear the weight of its central theme: that nobody’s perfect, that we all have vulnerabilities that should be worked on while at the same time we must accept what we cannot change. Explosions give way to sermonizing, romance steps aside for tragedy. The feelgood ending is even more absurd than any mystical notions introduced in the movie about the hero’s origins, while subtlety and nuance take a summer vacation. Rated PG-13. 92 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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