Movie Review: Hancock

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Hancock (2008)–**

“Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.”–Billy Wilder

Leave it to director Peter Berg to take Mr. Wilder seriously. Here’s a director who spends too much time shooting his blockbusters to look like Diving Bell and the Butterfly when all he can do is capture the essence of CSI. Someone needs to remind him that his movies have the dramatic potential of a South Park episode. Until someone does, we are going to have to suffer through more flicks like Hancock.

Hancock is a film that makes me hate the summer movie season. I fear running into pictures like it, pictures that don’t know how to balance their sense of entertainment and sense of drama. With Hancock, a superhero film written as parody and not as a serious action film, we must endure sequences of brow-furrowing seriousness to get to the moments of comedy.

And Hancock is funny…at times. Will Smith stars as a misanthropic superhero who spends more time thinking about his bottle of whiskey than he does the people he’s supposed to be helping. Highways get destroyed when he tries to save the day. SUVs dangle from the spire on the Capitol Records building like ugly Christmas tree ornaments. But after that particular SUV incident, the people are outraged. Even CNN’s Nancy Grace, who makes an agonizing cameo because Bill O’Reilly apparently has some standards, is outraged.

Hancock needs help, and he gets it when he saves Ray (Jason Bateman), a PR executive with a heart of gold. While Ray can’t get corporations to buy into his do-gooder campaign, Hancock, a lonely, amnesiac soul, is more willing. As Ray nurtures Hancock through his transformation from profanity-spouting, hard-drinking super asshole to a hip, lovable Superman, both he and Hancock discover that salvation may be a little closer to home.

By that I mean–SPIT IT OUT SPOILER BOY–Ray’s wife (Charlize Theron). She’s a god damn superhero. In fact, she’s more than a superhero; she’s Hancock’s super ex-girlfiend. Painful revelations ensue.

You can smell the stench of franchise opportunity on Hancock from the moment the comedy gets lost and the weak-kneed mythology building begins. Hancock suddenly isn’t superhero parody. It’s a superhero movie. In fact if you stripped the film of all its comedy, you’d find a decent sequel to Superman Returns. (Superman falls of the wagon and is an angry drunk.  That’s good times.)

But Berg can’t do that, not with talent like Bateman and Smith. They’re fun, funny guys. Smith doesn’t need to tap into his range for a role like this, and Bateman doesn’t have any to speak of (though he is better for it). For all the hand-held camera shots and extreme close-ups, the plot still keeps reality at a distance. It would have been fine had Berg done the same thing.

I’m going to be writing a Fourth of July post on another Will Smith movie, Independence Day. After all these years and all these other blockbusters, I’ve come to appreciate the escapist elements of the sci-fi epic more and more. Films like Hancock make me long for another Independence Day because there’s little escapism to be found here. Though about halfway through the movie escaping the theater did come to mind.

Hancock, directed by Peter Berg, starring Will Smith, Jason Bateman and Charlize Theron, is now playing.