Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
7/5/08
You
don't expect to see something like this on the 4th of July holiday weekend.
In fact, it's a certain kind of movie one expects to see only in mid-January,
late April, late August, or mid-October: a big-budget spectacular
based on a screenplay too dark or challenging for a commercial niche which
has been dumbed down, compromised, reshot, re-edited, focus grouped, test
screened and generally cut down to within an inch of coherence. Throughout
90-odd minutes, the screen crackles with spectacle and starpower, but you
ask yourself, “Who in their right mind would set out to put all this Hollywood
muscle behind THIS story?” The answer, of course, is no one.
Movies like Hancock don't set out to be what they become, but it's
a slippery slope of one tweak here, one compromise there until what
you have doesn't just fail to resemble what you set out to make, but also
what anyone would want to see. And I'm not sure to whom this very
peculiar superhero flick will appeal: very broad comedy, very ambitious
fantasy drama, and an almost painfully naïve social consciousness
keep canceling each other out as they battle for screen time. But
Peter Berg's movie tries very hard to be whatever it is that it's supposed
to be, and I never stopped expecting that it would all start clicking in
just a moment or two... at least until the credits rolled.
The
criminals of Los Angeles live in fear of John Hancock (Will Smith):
for that matter, so do the law-abiding. Hancock has a dazzling array
of super-powers: flight, super-strength and he's basically indestructible.
But he's also deeply troubled, drinks far too much, and has no concern
for the damage his war against crime leaves in its' wake. But he
DOES do good, including saving PR man Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) from being
struck by an oncoming train. Ray, who's been waging a borderline
pathetic campaign to get companies to sign on to sport his world-saving
“All Heart” logo, sees an opportunity to do some good of his own by giving
the troubled superhero an image makeover. He brings John home to
meet his Hancock-worshiping son Aaron (Jae Head) and his wife Max (Charlize
Theron), who takes an immediate visceral dislike to the violent superman.
Ray's plan is simple: Hancock should let angry law enforcement lock
him away for his destructive antics, then sit back and wait until a soaring
crime rate brings them crawling to his cell door begging for help.
It works: Hancock flies back into action, complete with a shiny new
costume and training on politeness, to foil a bank robbery led by Red (Eddie
Marsan). It would seem like everything's looking up for the hero,
who confides to Ray and Max that he woke up in a hospital 80 years earlier
with amnesia, superpowers and apparent immortality. But the secret
of that immortality is about to come calling, placing him in danger that
only escalates when a vengeful Red escapes from prison.
Watching
the wacky trailers featuring drunken Hancock leaving a trail of comic destruction
in his wake, you'd never imagine A)how little of Hancock is actually
trying to be funny, and B)how structurally similar it is to M. Night Shayamalan's
The Village. Around the 2/3 mark, screenwriters Vincent Ngo
(who wrote the original version, titled Tonight, He Comes, over
10 years ago) and Vince Gilligan drop a game-changing bomb the movie spends
its' remaining thirty minutes desperately trying to justify. But
unlike The Village, whose twist I saw coming pretty far away, Hancock
has done almost none of the work necessary to prepare us for what its'
story is actually about. It's hard to get past the notion that no
one in LA seems to care where John Hancock came from or why: the
city treats the first human being ever to have comic book-style superpowers
as though he was a violent male Britney Spears. Ray is surprised
to hear his 80 year-old origin story, but the movie doesn't even try to
justify that time lag: how long has Hancock been fighting crime?
What caused him to start? It must have been recently, mustn't it?
Otherwise, wouldn't the notion that he's been agelessly in the public eye
for 80 years, in its' own way, be an even bigger story than his superpowers?
Wouldn't the first time a man flew down from the sky and foiled a bank
robbery be a story as known to every man, woman and child as the moon landing?
The final half hour is a hodgepodge of mythical romance, destiny and relentless
exposition that can't catch its' breath long enough to even try to make
sense. The nature and rules of Hancock's pivotal connection to another
character keep changing from moment to moment, even as that character keeps
talking said connection to death trying to dot every “i” and cross every
“t” the moment it appears. In general, the script is terrible about
details: this is the kind of movie fans will tell you shouldn't be
examined closely because “it's just supposed to be fun”, but that's really
not the case at all. It takes itself VERY seriously, with the final
act pitched as high drama rather than summer escapism, and that makes its'
narrative failings all the more pronounced.
Flop
sweat hangs all over the proceedings: I'd expect to find at least
a half hour of deleted scenes lying around Sony's vaults that would answer
many of my questions, but by the time a movie this miscalculated sees the
light of the day, the priority is to minimize audience pain by making it
as short as possible rather than worrying about whether people understand
any of what they've just seen. Knowing full well that it's going
to misrepresent itself as a superhero comedy, Berg has ladled on the Wacky
Hip-Hop Muzak whenever possible (yes, we are deep enough into the rap era
that Ice T's Colors can now be used in a comedy in pretty much the
same way as Sweet Home Alabama), and even resorts to the Sanford
& Son Theme at a moment which has less than nothing to do with
it (and everything to do with a completely mistaken assumption about what
is anatomically possible). A running gag about how Hancock will only
allow you to call him an asshole twice before beating you up seems to have
wandered in from that new Beverly Hills Cop sequel Eddie Murphy
is said to be making. And the story ends with perhaps the single
biggest “you've got to be kidding me!” groaner of a sentimental moment
I've ever seen in a movie.
So,
given the ever deepening sinkhole of disaster in which Hancock stands,
why didn't I totally hate it? For one thing, the movie is really
committed to its' weird, aimless story, one that contains lots of elements
that really interest me (superheroes in a real world context, immortality,
even The Reveal itself, which isn't unpromising until the movie doesn't
know what to do with it). For another, it's enacted with total commitment
by a really good cast. Will Smith is as funny as the material allows,
and he has a lot of luck with Hancock's embittered desire to be loved by
the public he claims to disdain. Granted, he can't let us into the
man's head as much as I'd have liked, but given the swiss cheese nature
of the script, I can't say anyone connected to the production was absolutely
certain what was in there anyway. Theron's obviously not just here
to stand next to Bateman, and she does everything she can to do with her
face what the script will never allow her to do with words: build
a real story arc for Max. Bateman gives Ray his all, and strikes
great comic sparks with Smith, although as written, the “Bono of PR” is
really bad at his job. Shouldn't his All Heart pitch at some point
mention the notion that corporations would want to be associated with a
world-saving charitable endeavor not to save the world, but to make big
profits when customers buy their products specifically because “That company
is trying to save the world”? And why doesn't he ever think of giving
Hancock a superhero alias when he's trying to improve his image?
Marsen makes the most of his couple scenes as the movie's nominal villain.
As Variety likes to say, Tech credits are excellent across the board,
with really good special effects making Hancock's destruction and a mostly
pointless series of FX tornadoes surprisingly realistic.
There's
something compelling about Hancock's ambitions: clearly everybody
involved in the production had a passion for this story, but it just doesn't
work. The early scenes waste time being funny when they need to be
setting up the big twist, and later scenes waste time telling (and not
even convincingly) what they need to be showing. I wanted this movie
to be good, right up to the bitter end, but it's just not. And I'd
imagine seeing it again would really hurt. |
