Hancock (2008)

Story: After drunken, property damaging, publicity loathing superhero John Hancock (Will Smith) saves publicist Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) from a train when his car gets stuck across the tracks, Ray invites Hancock home for dinner and offers to help make over his public image. Mary Embrey (Charlize Theron), however, thinks that this is a bad idea.

When Hancock flies, he doesn't streamline his body like a bullet like most superheroes. Instead, his arms and legs wave around herky-jerky, and he competes with planes, buildings, and birds for airspace. When he takes off and when he lands, he crumbles the earth beneath him, leaving small craters behind. He saves Ray only to receive a torrent of criticism from the amassed crowd (critical consensus: he should have gone straight up). He's blessed with supernatural abilities, and everyone, even small children on the street, think that that means he should use them to help out. No one seems willing to consider the possibility that maybe he just doesn't want to.

It's an interesting concept, and one that most superhero movies, whether they are based on comic books or are sui generis, rarely traffic in. Sure, nearly all of them address the idea that being a superhero has it drawbacks, but those are usually limited to their relationships with women. Spider-Man 2, arguably one of the best comic book movies ever committed to celluloid, devoted an entire act to the prospect that maybe, just maybe, Peter Parker wasn't ready to accept the responsibility of being Spider-Man. When he puts it aside, we find him much, much happier.

While they have special abilities, it isn't like superheroes are police officers, firemen, or EMTs. They didn't sign up for the gig, and they don't get paid for it. Initially, this is what Hancock is all about it: a man who doesn't want the responsibility and what happens when the public tries to foist it on him. Then the movie makes a sharp left turn, and, while it is surprising (you'll guess bits and pieces, but it's hard to put the entire puzzle together), it also drops what you were watching entirely. Too bad; it could have been one helluva movie.

The other movie is also pretty good, although it would have also been better if it had been an entire movie instead of half of one. It raises far more questions than it would ever consider answering including, most gratingly to me, [minor spoiler if you figure out what I mean] why all things don't apply equally to everyone. I've read that the original script, penned by Vincent Ngo, floated around for over a decade until director Peter Berg got a hold of it in 2006, and that the finished product is the result of extensive rewrites by, presumably, the other credited writer Vince Gilligan. I wonder which story was which, and which would have been the better whole movie to make it to the big screen.

Even so, Berg's got a masterful command of his camera and cast, and, while I found myself distracted (plot wise), it was always exciting to watch (visually). The cast is great, although Bateman is particularly noteworthy because his character is the only one to safely make the transition between the two movies. Also, did those make up artists have it in for Theron? Runny, smudgy black eyeliner and later reverse raccoon eye? I think so. B+