Movie Review: Hancock

I sense that Will Smith’s latest movie venture will have people flocking to their local cinema to see it. Couple his fan-favourite and celebrity status with a superhero movie and the people waiting to cash the cheques have a sure box office winner on their hands. It’s just a shame then that once you get passed the novelty of the idea, Hancock is nothing more than an expensive and good looking throwaway movie.

Hancock follows Smith’s title character, a drunk who just happens to have super powers. As he flies around the city saving people's lives the people hate him because of the trail of destruction he leaves behind. But to the rescue comes Jason Bateman’s PR man who wants to help Hancock be loved and appreciated by the public that hate him.

There are many interesting elements to Hancock dotted here, there, and everywhere throughout the movie. There’s stuff about Hancock’s past and how he became the way he is and the questioning of the emotional effect that having superpowers could have on an individual. The filmmakers were also quite creative with superpowers themselves. However, it’s very clear that this is a big studio movie with tons of money thrown at it and it never quite breaks away from that. The ideas, especially those of the origins of these superpowers, are there but you just can’t see them for all the flying rubble caused by the title character, or more specifically, by the technical wizards behind it. Just when new trouble arises and Hancock has to fly in to save the lives of the people involved, the film feels the need to cause a big ruckus by having things explode or crash through buildings.

The film has a weakness that I have started to notice in modern Hollywood fare - it tries to be two movies in one. The first, and better, of the two is Hancock being the hero and saving people’s lives from the likes of oncoming trains, bank robbers, and lots of other dangers that are both shown and alluded to. Although the wow factor of seeing these superpowers does wear off quite quickly, there is an entertainment value to it. However, the second movie really drags the whole thing to a screeching halt as it tries to throw in this origin storyline. As I said, his origin is interesting in concept but the movie never allows it to be fleshed out in any way whatsoever, instead it’s just mentioned a couple of times as a passing thought. I’m not saying I would have actually liked them to go into it full swing with flashbacks and the like, but rather to explain it properly, have the idea in a separate movie or don’t have it at all. Attempting to have this movie be more than what it clearly is just bogs the whole thing down and pretty much wastes any enjoyment you might have gotten from it in the first place.

Article Author: Ross Miller

I am a film critic and blogger, and have been so for almost three years now, going from starting my own movie review website, Movie World (which is still running), and then moving on to writing for various movie blogs.

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