MOVIE REVIEW: 'Hancock'

From the Wednesday, July 2 Oregonian....

You can argue (and many have) that superheroes are our modern-day mythological heroes, and John Hancock (Will Smith) would fit right in with the worst of the Greek gods: He's a drunk, mean, reckless, self-pitying lout who's mostly annoyed by a human race that hates and fears him.

For some reason, Hancock is compelled (through a boozy haze) to commit heroic acts, but they always cost more than they're worth. He stops a trio of gangbangers in a shootout the L.A. freeway, but incurs $9 million in collateral damage. "He's using our city to beat himself up for reasons known only to him!" rages one city official. His rough landings are probably keeping several paving contractors in business. He saves a struggling publicist (Jason Bateman) about to be hit by a train, but derails the train when he doesn't think to simply lift Bateman's car above the locomotive.

And it's here that "Hancock" takes the first of many very strange turns -- when the desperate Bateman offers to help turn the antihero into a real hero, "to turn this power into willpower," rehabbing Hancock's image with voluntary prison time and counseling.

In a film marketplace where even the best superhero movies tend to do a lot of the same stuff -- origin stories, winky self-reference, somber mythmongering, scenes set at charity balls -- I really admire Will Smith and bad-boy director Peter Berg ("The Rundown," "The Kingdom") for trying something different here. "Hancock" has a surprisingly rude sense of humor, an improvisational vibe, immediate camera work and rawer-than-usual music on the soundtrack.

Smith's performance continues his work in "I Am Legend," in the sense that he works a lot of flaws born of loneliness into the lead character in a nine-figure blockbuster. He's at his best at the beginning of the film, when Hancock's at his celebrity-on-a-bender worst; there's something giddy about watching a train wreck with superpowers speak this bluntly, and I loved his horrifying attempts at smiling in the early stages of Bateman's career-rehab effort. And Bateman is, of course, hilarious. Imagine his "Arrested Development" character's throwaway comic timing transplanted into the mind of an image consultant, and how that might mock every self-loathing superhero cliché.

All that said, I'm not sure "Hancock" is 100-percent successful. The problem (and "problem" feels like an overly strong word here) involves late-film decisions about plot complication and tone.

Part of Smith and Berg's subvert-your-expectations gameplan involves a major mid-film shocker -- one that takes the movie to larger mythological places unrelated to Hancock's self-improvement quest. It's a genuine surprise, which is appreciated, but it also dilutes the film's previously tight sense of humor, character and focus, preventing the filmmakers from diving as far into their promising early ideas as maybe they should have. Bateman takes a back seat to the action, and Hancock's self-examination takes a back seat to Berg putting him through some serious new paces.

In fact, I don't want to ruin it, but the twist is vast and high-concept enough that it probably would have made a decent starting point for a separate sequel. You'll see what I mean.
_____

B-minus; 92 minutes; rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence and language.

'Hancock' (The Oregonian, July 2, 2008)