DOES MR. FOURTH OF JULY DELIEVER AGAIN? (My review of HANCOCK)

I started my Fourth of July weekend a little early by going to see Will Smith’s new movie, Hancock, the day it came out. It had been a pretty good day as I headed for the theatre. I had an early lunch with a good friend of mine and I hit the comic store just as it opened so I know I didn’t miss any titles that week. It was a pretty full day up to that point and when I got to the theatre, I forgot that I was early enough for the matinee price (still $8 though, what a rip off) and there was even a free credit on one of the arcade machines. Things were definitely going my way. Unfortunately, the universe has a way of balancing things out. Hancock sucked; plain and simple.

The premise of the movie is that John Hancock (Will Smith) is the only one of his kind. He is a living, breathing superhero. He can fly. He has super strength. He is bulletproof. He is everything we want to be and yet he is the most miserable man in the world. In a constant drunken stupor, Hancock does what he wants, when he wants, and does not care what people think or how much destruction his “good deeds” cost the city of Los Angeles. Time moves on when average public relations “guru” Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) gets stuck on railroad tracks due to one of L.A.’s famous traffic jams. Enter the oncoming freight train. Ray tries to run from his car, but is too slow and his screams attract Hancock, who promptly throws the car out of the way as the train smashes into him, destroying the train, but saving Ray. Ray wishes to repay Hancock by changing his image. He wants to make Hancock into someone people will love. The story continues as Hancock begins his rehab, thanks to Ray and his hot wife Mary (Charlize Theron), and Hancock finds out that there is more to himself, and Ray’s wife Mary, than meets the eye.

This was such an awful experience overall. The first half hour was great. Will Smith was great as the drunken anti-hero the previews portrayed him as. Jason Bateman was great in the role he seems type-cast in nowadays (curse you Arrested Development!), the bumbling suit with a heart of gold. Charlize Theron was hot. You would think they had something going here, but the last hour of the movie was absolute rubbish. There was no super villain. There was no amazing over the top fight scene (there were a couple of decent fight scenes, but nothing spectacular). The twist in the plot line was such an overused comic book cliché that I almost was able to recite the last 30 minutes of the movie just from my years of comic book reading. This was the movie studio executives thinking they could give the people what they want with once again having no idea what we want.

One of those executives was… (Insert suspenseful comic book music here) Will Smith! That’s right; Will was one of the producers of this movie. Therefore, in the end it came down to Will Smith wanting to play a superhero, however, the problem with that glorious plan is we already saw this six months ago with I am Legend so it was really more like Will Smith wanted to play a superhero, again. And, again, said superhero character ends up being a messiah figure that sacrifices himself to save the world, but in this movie Will takes it a few steps further as he magically rises after what (for the movie-goer) feels like three days. We get it Will. You think you are a god. Newsflash: YOU DO NOT HAVE SUPERPOWERS. YOU ARE NOT A SUPERHERO. YOU PLAY ONE IN THE MOVIES. YOU ARE RICH AND YOU ARE FAMOUS, BE SATISFIED!

Overall there was not much to salvage from this movie. The special effects they used were solid, but nothing spectacular and they were nothing we haven’t seen in previous comic book movies. The acting was alright, but, then again, you had a high quality of actors and actresses. You tell Charlize Theron to cry and she is going to cry. The plot was weak, at best. It started off strong, and the premise of the anti-hero is still a great one, but it makes you wonder how much better it could have been if they had stayed with the original R-rated cut instead of feeding us this watered down PG-13 version. The only real positive I could take from this was that a regular dude named Ray ended up with super hot Charlize Theron and that gives this real-life Ray a little bit of hope. Then again, it is only a movie and a pretty bad one at that. Hancock gets an uninspired, watered down, 1 out of 5.

-Ray Carsillo

P.S.: Listen to the show “Metro Line” on 1050 AM, ESPN Radio in NY at 5 AM on Sunday, July 6th, 2008, to hear me talk about comics, movies, and other stuff I talk about in my blog. If not, I will try to get it up on the page at some point. Thanks!