Hancock – The Superhero Who Landed Face First

One look at the promos for the movie Hancock and you feel here is the perfect antidote for all that is worrying about life right now – from the sky-high prices of fuel to the heat and dust in the hood.

However, you step into the theater and begin to wonder how to twist and turn yourself or your grey matter to balance the equation such that Hancock = amusement.

Made at a staggering $150 million the script of this movie reportedly went around Hollywood for many years. The concept was rightfully considered to be brilliant but it came with a tag — the story was better on paper than on reel.

Unfortunately, director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom), supported by Will Smith, Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman ended up adopting a literal approach to the film instead of taking a shot at all the undertones and sub layers that the plot seemed to point to.

The film that was supposed to be a dark comedy that takes off on the countless superheroes ringing the American comic space (now movie, internet, and gaming space as well), instead, turns out to be a strange one… let us just leave it at that.

The hero of the movie Hancock is a superhero – and that too the most unlikely of them all. He is a jerk who is clumsily superhuman, and who finds refuge in drunkenness, sleeping on park benches in Los Angeles. He is a superhero that the city is fed up of.

Will Smith plays Hancock with his usual finesse, though it all falls apart somewhere along the way. Fed up of his bad image, Hancock hires a PR consultant in the form of Jason Bateman, who turns out to be another bird of the same feather as Hancock.

While the movie meanders along fairly well up until this point, where the new PR man is trying to change the public’s person of the superhero, from here on the movie just takes a steep plunge into the unknown, possibly, a plunge from which recovery is difficult, even for Hancock.

The key players in the movie are good, and that is one of the major problems. Smith, Charlize Theron (who plays Bateman’s wife), and Bateman are not able to rise to the levels that a superhero and his crew are supposed to rise.

The PG13 rating seems a little odd as well, considering the degree of violence that is on show – the shootouts, blood, et al. All in all, a grand attempt that fell flat – that is how you can sum up Hancock.