Will Smith returned to his Fourth of July blockbuster stomping grounds – and tried his hand at playing a superhero slightly before it was cool – in 2008’s “Hancock.” His smooth ability to make a drunken and depressive superhero into a sympathetic person is the strength of the movie, which plays like a just-for-fun, see-what-sticks effort from co-writer Vince Gilligan and director Peter Berg, who have done better work elsewhere.
Two ideas stitched together
“Hancock” is two ideas stitched together, and the first half is better as Hancock gets to know the family of PR man Ray (Jason Bateman), Mary (Charlize Theron) and Aaron (Jae Head, giving a naturalistic child performance). Hancock’s bonding with Aaron, shown through the softening of Smith’s eyes, is the heart of the film.
There’s good comedy here, too, a lot of it coming from how Hancock – whose powers are like Superman’s – moves through the world differently. He stops a train that’s moving at full speed. He picks up a car to use as a shield while he’s rescuing a woman from gunfire. I think the film even implies that he can fly to the moon and back with little effort.
“Hancock” (2008)
Director: Peter Berg
Writers: Vy Vincent Ngo, Vince Gilligan
Stars: Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman
2008 was a time when close examinations of superheroes operating in the real world were still somewhat novel. Hancock is a bull in a china shop, partly because of his unnatural strength and speed and flying ability, partly because he’s a stumbling drunkard.
So a lot of citizens dislike him, and understandably so. The cost of living in the city “protected” by Hancock is probably much higher than other cities because of insurance rates and infrastructure repair costs. Critics aren’t wrong to ask if it’s worth it to be “helped” by this guy.
It always goes for the chuckle
These issues are mildly engaging, but never taken all that seriously. “Hancock” always goes for a chuckle rather than internal logic. Why, for example, would Hancock’s fellow prisoners try to beat him up? Hancock put most of them in there, so they know he is invincible.
Sure, when Bateman and Smith play out the jail visiting-booth conversation where Ray is exasperated that Hancock put one guy’s head into another guy’s ass, they are both masters of comic timing. But it’s at the expense of taking the overall material seriously.
Still, this is good throwaway entertainment, and if Berg makes strange choices like his bevy of close-up shots, and if the low-key satire of public-relations work never quite connects, it doesn’t hurt the film all that much. After all, Smith – who would later play Deadshot in “Suicide Squad” – is back in a July 4 blockbuster and we’re riffing on the lesser-examined issues of “Superman” and it’s all in good fun.
Switching gears
Then – cue record scratch – Gilligan and co-writer Vy Vincent Ngo lose interest in all of these threads and switch to Hancock’s origin story. Granted, this does allow Theron more to do, as we learn Mary is also superpowered.
Mary and Hancock, former lovebirds (although the actors don’t have that kind of chemistry), have a metaphor-laden curse: When they are physically close, they become mortal. Maybe some viewers like this twist, but to me it’s not worth it to bail on the themes the film was previously exploring.
“Hancock” pumps up the music score for the hospital-based final fight, apparently trying to jerk some tears out of us, and it hastily explains that a supervillain-of-sorts, Red (Eddie Marsan), has the power to brainwash henchmen into working for him. (To be fair, that might retroactively explain the jailhouse confrontation.)
Just by having Smith do his thing, especially when playing off the kid who adores him, “Hancock” is lined up to be a classic redemption yarn of the family-friendly variety (if parents are OK with the film’s regular use of the word “asshole”). It’s an easy-to-watch film at 92 minutes, but it fumbles the ending when it switches to higher stakes that ironically lower the story’s quality.