Friday, April 3, 2015

Hancock


RATING: C+

In today's world, Hollywood is throwing out endless adaptions of Marvel and DC heroes. Many we've never even heard of. In this case, we haven't heard of this guy because... he's not a comic-book hero! 

Yup, someone went and created their own superhero film strictly for the big screen. Now *that's* rare. 

This one centers around a guy who's basically Superman in the form of Will Smith (oddly enough, Will Smith doesn't even seem much like Will Smith until about midway through the film). Named Hancock. And he's an alcoholic who saves people all the time--but when he does, he causes so much collateral damage in the process, an arrest warrant is issued for him despite all the criminal's he's putting away. 

So a PR director named Ray, after getting his life saved by him, decides to see if he can't get Hancock to change his ways so that he doesn't cause collateral damage and so that the people actually start appreciating him. 

And you know what? It actually works. He turns himself into prison, and when the cops decide they desperately need him, they call him out of prison where he dispatches the bad guys much more carefully (well, depending on how you define carefully). And he is hailed as a hero. 

And by the way, everything that I just went through--that's pretty much the entire marketing pitch for the plot. And all of that occurs... just in the first 40 minutes. So it becomes pretty clear that there's a heck of a lot more going on here. 

The truth of the matter is, this movie essentially tells two separate stories... in 90 minutes. It first tells the story of Hancock's redemption... and then it goes more into his origins, his dark deep secrets. Ray is practically sidelined while his wife, Mary, becomes more important. And the genre changes dramatically too. It turns from dark superhero comedy to more straight-up dark, cold and brutal. After a first 45 minutes or so with various laughs, there is basically no more humor for the rest of the film. Is this a bad or good thing? I'm not sure. I just wish they'd been slightly more consistent. (Of course, if the entire film had been like the 2nd half--particularly the last 15-20 minutes--it would've ended up sticking with the R rating it originally got--twice.)

This film does have some good things going for it. For starters, it's very creative. How many superhero films can you think of that don't have any source material whatsoever? Even if it's somehow not Marvel or DC? I have to give them massive props for that. Early on, it's fairly amusing. And it's certainly interesting the whole way through. Like I said, I kinda wish they'd been more consistent. If the first and second halves had actually been two separate films, it might actually have worked a bit better. Had the film figured out what it was truly trying to be, it might've been a lot better. 

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