Hancock

[Zarathustra]

In short: good first half, mediocre second half.

Expectations have a lot to do with how you view a movie. The commercials looked great. The concept was refreshing: an antihero. As a Covenant fan, you gotta love that. Also, it's nice to see something different with all the superhero movies coming out lately. Further, I love Will Smith. His career choices keep surprising me. He was stunning in I Am Legend.

So I was expecting a good movie.

Then I read a very negative review that complained about Will's character being an asshole. I was confused: isn't that the point? Nonetheless, my expectations were lowered. The review made it clear that even though this was intentional for the character development, Will didn't pull it off. People were going to hate him as Hancock.

So when the movie actually got going, I was pleasantly surprised. I really liked the first half--which portrayed his struggle against his own "failings" and the public perception of him. Just like the commercials imply. This is done well, and Will handles the character marvelously. It's actually moving to see him learn restraint and responsibility. The place where he has to stay--

Spoiler

prison

--in order to facilitate this transformation packs an emotional punch. He doesn't have to stay there. Physically, he could easily leave. But this is an emotional battle, an inner struggle. He's coming to grips with his own flaws. I liked it.

But there's a whiff of a screenplay gone awry when this transformation happens too quickly. Not only did it feel just a little rushed, but it also left me worrying about the rest of the film. Where would it go from here? What was left after the main character struggle was over?

Well, a bunch of crap, that's what was left. The commercials don't give you a hint of it, but trust me: the second half ruins the movie. It's completely disconnected from his struggle during the 1st half. Sure, it traces his past and gives a reason for his present predicament. But that merely "explains away" him being an asshole to begin with. It makes his asshole-ness "not his fault." It's as if the writers of the second half were completely different writers from the first half, and they missed the fact that Hancock redeemed himself. He didn't need writers to come to his rescue and supply a victimhood interpretation to his own flaws.

Oh, and the second half introduces a silly, contrived love story, as well. And the writers seem to recognize just how contrived this love story is (such as:

Spoiler

how Hancock "just happens" to get reconnected to his former lover

), so they fill up the second half with a bunch of exposition to explain the very unlikely coincidences.

Spoiler

(i.e. Hancock is constantly "driven back to her.

) But this doesn't explain how Hancock managed coincidently

Spoiler

to save her husband and start this inexplicable ball rolling. He wasn't driven to her. He just saves her husband and brings him home. Did he smell her perfume on this guy, or something?

Anyway, the movie falls apart with very VERY cheesy bad guys that are thrown in like an afterthought. Not some nemesis that chases him throughout the entire movie. No, just a thwarted bankrobber (who was captured by Hancock's one-and-only good deed after his "transformation") who then miraculously escapes prison just in time for Hancock to lose his powers so that this very mortal, very mundane bad guy could actually be a threat. How convenient! How did this ordinary guy know Hancock lost his powers? No explanation. Where did he and his cohorts get the balls to attack a superhero even though they didn't have any powers themselves or any weapons greater than guns? No explanation. They just show up in the final scene for the most anticlimactic superhero ending in the history of superhero movies.

How disappointing.

[Zarathustra]

Hey, Aint It Cool News agrees with me!

HANCOCK feels like two-thirds of what I'm guessing was a better movie at one point. Whether the good stuff was left on the cutting-room floor or whether it ever made it from page to celluloid, I have no idea, but the film feel wildly uneven and incomplete. This is a fractured movie about a guy with a fractured brain.

[snip]

Berg and writers Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan have absolutely saturated HANCOCK with lame sentimentality and a backstory for our hero that gets more ludicrous the more we hear. The climax set in a hospital might be the most pathetic, cheesy ending I've seen to a movie in a summer filled with such moments. When I started writing this review, I thought I'd be painting the picture of a close call, but as I've been pounding away at the keys, I realize that even my mind is trained to give Will Smith a pass. I think I've just exorcised that instinct, because I now realize that I genuinely did not like HANCOCK. With the exception of some choice outbursts by Smith as well as Bateman's overall performance, the comedy is stale. The effects are impressive enough, but no one will accuse them of being creative or dazzling. But the film's weakest link is it's unnecessarily plodding and disjointed plot. Yep, the more I think about it, the more I realize HANCOCK kinda sucks.

[Plissken]

I feel the same way as the reviewer -- I want to give Smith a pass, but my daughter said the film was horrible.

[Rigel]

It really felt like two separate movies. Either alone would have been fine if they had developed it further, but thrown together it just seemed like there was no thought put into it.

And do we really need to know that

Spoiler

Hancock is an angel, and there are no other angels anymore because they all had sex and died?

[kevinswatch]

I thought that it was a fun movie, and I loved the whole anti-hero character of Hancock (like Malik said, it must be something that us Covenant fans can appreciate...heh.) But yeah, I agree that the second half was a let-down.

-jay

[CovenantJr]

After seeing Hancock today, I agree. I can't be bothered with spoiler tagging individual sentences, so I'll just black out the whole lot:

Spoiler

I thought Smith did a good job of portraying a total asshole who is nonetheless fairly likeable. I think the likeability is helped by the fact that Hancock clearly doesn't entirely want to be the way he is; he just doesn't know any other way to live. Credit to Smith for conveying that, mainly through his eyes.

The redemption of Hancock does happen too quickly, sadly. It was so brief - and so segmented - that it was practically a montage. Not really appropriate. It needed to be much more gradual - as much for the public as for Hancock. It was not only about Hancock realising he needs to deserve appreciation before he can get it, but also about the people out there in the city realising that even a flawed hero is still a hero. IMO. The whole thing was too quick and too easy.

And then came the last part. From the moment it turned out that Mary was superhuman too, everything went downhill. I usually like to have some background on characters, but in this case I actually didn't mind the mystery of Hancock's past. And when his past was addressed, I much preferred the first explanation (he has no idea who he is or why he's superhuman, he just woke up that way in hospital) to the final one (he's one of some kind of fleet of guardians). One issue that I really expected to come up that didn't (and surely should have, considering) is the fact that Mary, blessed with the power to make a difference, doesn't even try. Hancock may be an asshole, but at least he always tried to help out. Mary just hid. There was one remark along the lines of "you let me think I was alone", but that was all. Not enough.

I also have to agree on the nemesis. The whole climactic sequence was, well, not. Not remotely climactic. Normal people come for Hancock while he's weak; that could work if he's exactly on their level and has to fight as a human being, vulnerable and devoid of super powers. But despite being human enough to be injured and die, he's still superhuman enough to sling things around effortlessly and bust through walls. The big confrontation needed to be either human Hancock versus human foes, or super Hancock versus super foes (or at least human foes with something more dangerous than a couple of guns and a prosthetic limb).

Still, the film was definitely worth watching. Asshole Hancock is fun to watch, and surprisingly easy to empathise with, as someone struggling with life. His redemption, too, though jarringly swift, is worth seeing; I was genuinely moved to see Hancock trying to be better, and to witness the acceptance this earned him. It was more affecting than similar scenes of victory and success from a relative pillar of rectitude like Superman or Spiderman.

All in all, a good film, let down by a ham-fisted second half.

[Warmark]

Spoiler

I just watched this tonight and agree that it seems 2 different movies. I just wish they had expanded the 'angel' concept. There were references to Hancock being in Greece and Persia and Rome, all of which could have been awesome flashbcks or something.

The only thing that confused me was the line ''they always come after you through me'' which Mary says to Hancock after he's been shot. Who comes after him? Who attacked him with a sword in 100 BC or whatever she said.

[CovenantJr]

Now I regret bothering with spoiler tags.

[Warmark]

[ItisWritten]

I just saw this on DVD, and I was surprised. Maybe it was my lowered expectations, or perhaps I was just on a different wavelength, but I liked it.

But it's not a superhero movie. That's the premise, the package, but it's just about Hancock learning who he is. The formula for a SH movie is the final mano-a-mano, but there isn't one here because that wasn't the point of the movie. Hell,

Spoiler

Hancock even needs someone else to finish the fight.

But to me, that was much better than the "hero pulls himself together for one last effort" cliche.

Spoiler

Though in getting far enough away from Mary he's required to do something similar.

The transformation of the first half isn't so much Hancock changing. The PR guy tells him earlier, "you care", and he does. It's just that he doesn't know how to do better.

Spoiler

The PR guy gives him the script, an expectation, of what should happen, and when it happens it's not sudden. For Hancock, it's behind schedule.

That he can stick with it as long as he does is the growth part, but Hancock only changes in how he does his heroics. The PR guy had it right.

Spoiler

Once the public saw that he wanted to change, and could keep his word about it, his PR would improve.

But did Hancock change? I don't think so.

A couple things asked in earlier posts:

Spoiler

how Hancock "just happens" to get reconnected to his former lover.

I understood that

Spoiler

Hancock and Mary are like magnets, and no matter how much they try to stay away from each other (in this case, Mary),

there they are living in the same metropolis.

Spoiler

the line ''they always come after you through me'' which Mary says to Hancock after he's been shot.

I found this to be less esoteric than coincidental.

Spoiler

Every time they get together, violence finds them as if they aren't suppose to become mortal. Mary does say at the end that heroism suits Hancock.

As for the bank robber, he was a Manson lunatic who didn't care if Hancock was impervious or not. He just wanted his revenge. It's also possible (considering the impossibility of the movie's premise) that he didn't believe anyone could be impervious to his type of violence.

Of course, there's a lot to take on faith in SH movies. Sometimes I find the complaints (even my own) nitpicky. I mean, we complain that SH movies are too formulaic, yet when one doesn't give us what we expect, we complain again.

But don't get the idea that I loved this movie. Just liked it. I'm not sure if I'll ever go out of my way to see it again.

[Zahir]

I liked it. Frankly, it did not seem like two movies to me, that in fact one story flowed into another. And much of what I read describing the plot and back story is simply inaccurate.

[ItisWritten]

I liked it. Frankly, it did not seem like two movies to me, that in fact one story flowed into another. And much of what I read describing the plot and back story is simply inaccurate.

Yes. A lot more connected than I expected after reading reviews.

[dlbpharmd]

This movie was ok. I had low expectations and that helped, and I didn't know enough about the movie before hand to even know that Charlize Theron (can a woman be any hotter?) was in it. 2/5 stars.

[Avatar]

Just watched it last night...agree with Malik...originally good premise, weak ending.

--A

[Harbinger]

Didn't finish this one.