One night in Hancock... Movie Review.
by Sanjuro | Published on July 7th, 2008, 8:41 am | Arts
So, I was well on my way to catching another showing of Wall-E on Saturday. I was right on time, ready to buy a ticket, when I realized the show-times I read online were wrong. Rather than wait another hour I decided to catch the next available showing for Hancock. Um, this will be a Spoiler filled review...cause I just cant cover this any other way... Believe me. I'm doing you a favor by revealing plot points to save you the trouble of discovering it yourself in the theater.
Hancock stars our favorite Scientologist in denial, Will Smith. It also stars Jason Bateman and Charlize Theron. Will Smith had shown some promise in "I am legend", but I saw none of that promise here aside from a couple of scenes.
To be frank, this film is a mess. Hancock opens much like the trailers you've seen. John Hancock is a drunken mess of a person with super human abilities. When he tries to do the right thing, he ends up doing more harm than good. I had a baaaad feeling when the movie kicked off with badly shot action scene and a ridiculously obvious (read: Over the top) soundtrack choice and music cue. We meet Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) in a conference room trying to pitch the concept of giving away TB drugs to kids... the drug manufacturers he was pitching to however saw it differently. Actually the only person to save this movie in any way Jason Bateman. Like everything else he is in, he simply walks away with the scene. His wife Mary is played by Charlize Theron...more on her later.
So one day Ray is driving home from work, distracted on his mobile. He gets stuck between two cars and is sitting in the middle of the train track. Hancock happens by, and saves him. Woo. Hancock flies Ray home and here is where we meet Rays wife Mary. She gives Hancock a look.. no wait that's not quite right.. she sorta uses the acting equivalent of driving a large steel mallet into someones skull to sell the point that she has a past with Hancock. This scene was awful. I almost yelled "Aw, Hell naw!!" myself in the theater. I mean, how dare we use any subtlety in this movie..
The movie would have worked.. it could have worked.. but it didnt work. I seemed like the humor was tacked on.. matter of fact, I read where they did reshoots and rewrites, and I think you can tell. Seems that they tried to turn what was to be a more serious film with some dark humor into a straight up comedy. BIG mistake.. the scenes that actually WORK are the serious ones.. the humor just seems hackneyed and ridiculous.
Allow me to showcase one scene that encapsulates the ridiculousness.. There is a scene where a bank is being robbed. This ends up being a pivotal scene as it is introducing us (a third through the film) to the main baddy. A cop is pinned against a squad car.. The gunmen are heavily armed (Machine guns, C-4, grenade launchers) and they have hostages. So Hancock waltzes over towards the cop. The baddys bring out granade lanchers and start blowing things to hell. As hancock picks up the squad car to protect the cop from bullets, the cars to the left and right explode as the granades hit... let me get this straight.. the cars all around can be hit with the grenades but they decide just to shoot the one Hancock is walking with??? Stupid, stupid, stupid!!
I wont even touch the fact the robbery comes out of left field.. and in this sequence we have no set up for a person who ends up being a pivotal character at the end. One imagines perhaps a lot was left on the cutting room floor, but one cant be certain with all the re-writes that took place. There are some plot devices that make no sense, scenes that aren't very well set up (if at all), and a very disjointed feeling about the whole picture.
It ends up that Hancock and Mary were married for generations. Hancock has forgotten this due to a hit on the head-eh, surprisingly that actually makes sense within the context of the plot. They have lived throughout human history and there is one plot device revealed between them referring to their powers that is pretty cool, but yet again, not fully realized.
I guess the reason I disliked this movie so much was because it could have been a great movie. It actually had a wonderful premise, and a great cast. The writers and director failed this one. I honestly think everyone did the best they could with the material they had to work with..They should have made it a drama with dark humor mixed in as breathers for the audience, tackled the emotional issues that Ray and Mary were going through, and dealt more with Hancock's isolation... Oh yeah, and left out the bad guy all together.
Is it too late to call for a 'do over'?
