Summer is here. With summer comes movies, lots of movies. Many of which are super hero movies. 2008 has already brought us two movies from this genre that have set the bar very high. Unfortunately, Peter Berg’s latest addition to the hero movies of 2008, Hancock, didn’t quite raise that bar any higher. It might have even lowered it.
Hancock (Will Smith) is a super hero. But he’s not just your regular ol’ “save people, they like you, you like them” hero. No no, he’s way too black cool for that. Not only is Hancock a hero, he’s also an alcoholic who happens to be hated by the public (due to how he saves people, rather than being loved for actually saving them). Instead of using his powers for evil, he continues saving members of the Los Angeles community, including a public relations agent with aspirations of saving the world. Enter Ray Emery (Jason Bateman). After becoming Hancock’s latest good deed, Ray invites him to dinner with his wife Mary (Charlize Theron) and their son Aaron (Jae Head). Over meatballs, Ray convinces Hancock that the public needs him. While Ray is happy with helping Hancock earn the love of the community, Mary doesn’t seem too thrilled about her husbands new super-friend.
Hancock felt like it was lost from the start. The opening chase scene (a half-assed attempt at a Michael Bay chase scene) had me rolling my eyes rather than on the edge of my seat. This was mainly due to the subtitles given to the “Asian gangsters”. Believe it or not Hollywood, “Soulja-boy” can’t and shouldn’t be translated into just any language.
The story was a good concept for a super hero movie, but Peter Berg didn’t seem to know what to do with such a big plot. His other movies like Friday Night Lights and The Kingdom have all taken place on pretty simple and stable sets with simple and stable plots. Hancock however, is supposed to be…super. This requires you to have scenes of our hero flying around the city, destroying buildings, making cars explode, throwing beached whales back into the ocean etc. While all of this occurs, it feels as though Berg bit off a bit more than he could chew. There are still his trademark “hand-held camera” shots, as well as tight crops on our characters faces during moments of thought and worry, but his style did not fit this movie. I remember thinking, “Wow this director is shooting in the same style as Peter Berg, but worse.” Once the credits ran and I saw that it was, in fact, Berg himself who had been directing the movie the entire time.
Even if the directing wasn’t a problem, the runtime of Hancock still is. At a mere 92 minutes, there’s no time to successfully resolve everything that had been established. For example, just when Hancock finally starts to open up to a group of inmates while being in prison (not a spoiler), he’s released. There’s no “finding yourself” moment. There’s no breakthrough where he realizes he has a gift that can be used for good, rather than his own selfish gain. Instead, he simply gets called from the chief of police to save the day and after doing so, his prison stay is a distant memory from the past.
It also really seemed like the bigwigs behind Hancock couldn’t decide who they wanted as it’s audience. It has foul language that I’m sure parents won’t want their children hearing. But it also has moments that were blatantly put in the movie for children to be amused with.
Though I’ve bashed the shit out of Hancock, I must say that I enjoyed Bateman’s whit as I always will, and Smith’s acting gets better with every picture he does. Maybe I set expectations before seeing this movie and that’s why I wasn’t impressed. Maybe it was due to me seeing Wanted four days ago and I was expecting more action. Maybe I’m just too psyched for The Dark Knight. Who knows? Anyway, I’m sure Hancock will make a ton of money and earn Smith his 8th consecutive movie to gross $100 million, but I can sleep soundly knowing that I didn’t contribute to that insane amount of money.
6.6 out of 10.
Tags: Action, Charlize Theron, Comedy, Fight, Funny, Hancock, Hero, Jason Bateman, Movie, Movie Review, Review, Superhero, Villain, Will Smith
