Hancock starts strong, fizzles

By Allison Brophy Champion

Published: July 10, 2008

“Hancock” rules, or at least the first hour did.

The ending, on the other hand, an additional 30 minutes or so, is protracted and perplexing.

You lost me dog; this movie’s so-called “twist” is lame. Leave it out next time.

Otherwise, Will Smith’s latest blockbuster about a boozing, slovenly, down in the dumps superhero is worth a watch on the big screen. It’s action-packed and funny.
Plus, Will Smith.

The movie starts in a flash with a crazy police chase on an L.A. freeway with automatic weapons and angry foreigners. The music is wild and bluesy and very engaging — my kudos to composer John Powell, a Brit, for an innovative original score.

Hancock sleeps through the City of Angel’s latest emergency, passed out on a bench on the street, surrounded by bottles of empty bourbon. When a passing kid tries to wake him, Hancock blows him off, evoking the first reference to a body orifice starting with an “a.”

The whole city thinks Hancock is one even though he regularly saves people’s lives and fights crime, if unwillingly. The animosity against him stems from the fact that when he does good deeds, he also does a lot of damage.

For example, his latest drunken intervention on the freeway caused some $9 million in damage to street signs, cop cars, the highway, bridges, buildings, etc., etc.

“A personal record for the notoriously publicity shy Hancock who can’t be reached for comment,” says a newscaster, later joined by CNN’s lovely Nancy Grace who gives Hancock a thorough tongue lashing.

He can’t be reached for comment because he’s in the corner bar, trying to drink away his loneliness or something.

A few words about Hancock: he’s completely bulletproof, doesn’t age, flies like a rocket, has fingernails as sharp as razors, can stop trains and is from, er, Miami? From what I can tell, he feels no pain. Maybe he’s immortal.

“I don’t know who I am,” he says, and, “I’m the only one of my kind,” supposedly.

Enter Jason Bateman as Ray Embrey, a.k.a., “the Bono of PR,” as in, public relations.

Still drunk, Hancock saves the guy from being flattened by an approaching train, and in the process gains a friend.

Ray actually thanks Hancock for saving him and vows to help him change his image.

“All you people blocking the intersection — you’re all idiots,” Hancock says to the motorists surrounding the train tracks and he’s right.

Then he picks up Ray’s crumpled car, with Ray in it, and flies him home.

Here, Hancock meets the wife Mary (Charlize Theron) and kid Aaron (Jae Head), who immediately takes a liking to him.

The wife, not so much.

“Don’t work with this guy,” she tells Ray. “I know this kind of guy. He breaks things.”

Meanwhile, Hancock schools Aaron on how to deal with bullies (a swift kick in the male nether regions; imagine that). For the first time, our tragic superhero is beginning to look not so pained.

Maybe he belongs here.

“What the hell are you … looking at?” Hancock says to the neighbors, standing around a hole in the pavement he caused when he landed earlier, and yes, he needs some softening.

Good thing then for Ray, who promptly offers a basic diagnosis of his fundamental problem.

“Deep down, I think you behave badly because you’re lonely,” he says.

Bateman is more than watchable in this role, proving once again that he has staying power and real talent as an actor.

Enjoyed him lots, along with little Aaron, the son.

Ms. Theron, on the other hand, eh. She was just OK, little more than a beautiful face.

The first part of Hancock’s rehabilitation requires some time in the L.A. County Jail, where the other inmates hate him because he helped put most of them there. One calls him a not so complimentary name, uh-oh, and promptly get his head shoved up another guy’s rear.

Funny stuff.

Meanwhile, on the outside, crime is on the rise because Hancock’s in the slammer. Ray is confident something will give though, and it does: the chief of police calls, needing Hancock’s help with a bank robbery.

He arrives pronto, not breaking anything, in a new leather getup, telling all the men in blue, “Good job, good job,” before thwarting the crooks and saving the day.
He’s had a change of heart.

From here, “Hancock” goes downhill and fast. Maybe I dozed off, but the last half-hour was like a completely different movie.

Allison Brophy Champion can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or