Hancock A Delight - Mobile Edition

Movie Reviews
Hancock A Delight
By Beth Davies-Stofka
July 7, 2008 - 16:38

Title: Hancock
Starring: Will Smith, Jason Bateman, Charlize Theron, Eddie Marsan
Directed by: Peter Berg
Writers: Vy Vincent Ngo, Vince Gilligan
Produced by: Akiva Goldsman, Michael Mann, Will Smith, James Lassiter
Genre: Action/Adventure
Release Date: July 2, 2008 (wide)
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence and language.
Distributors: Sony Pictures Releasing

Note to would-be producers of superhero movies: Go see Hancock. Not because it's a great film; after all, superhero movies really aren't anything more than vehicles for thrills and entertainment. No, anyone who wishes to produce a film in the superhero genre should go in order to see what happens when a superhero movie departs from generic conventions. Like its titular character, Hancock answers to nothing and nobody, and so it brings refreshing insight into how much fun superhero movies can be.

Take the music, for example. Hancock opens on a high-speed chase on the Los Angeles freeway, with young thugs hanging out the windows of an SUV and firing at will with what appear to be automatic weapons. In a conventional superhero movie, the music would announce that this is a serious situation with serious ramifications, before a superhero would arrive on the wings of strings and brass, lifting hopes and spirits with the promise of a justice inevitably more powerful than any criminal, no matter how callous or fiendish. But Hancock's high-speed chase is set to the unlikely choice of rockabilly music, signaling that unlike other films of the genre, this one has no intention of asking you to take it seriously. When we first see Hancock, we aren't listening to the swelling strains of heroic justice, but the lonely pickings of a blues guitar. It's still a joke, but it tells you this hero has a bad case of the blues, and unlike other heroes, he's more than content to indulge it.

The humor also departs from convention. Since the first blockbuster superhero movie, Richard Donner's 1978 Superman, the genre has always winked at the audience. In this sense, Hancock is no different. It gets genre-driven laughs, like a too-tight uniform or a poorly-executed landing. And it gets plenty of laughs by spoofing the genre. But its finest comedic moments lie in plotting and character. Will Smith is very funny as the sour-tempered and taciturn John Hancock, and best of all, the movie showcases the comedy genius of Jason Bateman. His affable, kind, and idealistic plugger Ray Embrey gets laughs just by asking his son to eat his supper, not to mention his patient attempts to rehabilitate a hero. Smith and Bateman play off each other beautifully, and both bring a feeling of regular-guy humanity nearly always missing from the super-charged melodrama of the world of superheroes. The comedy goes south about halfway through when the movie abandons parody for the sake of developing its own mythology, and Bateman has less to do.

The movie's unconventional visual style is the finest departure from the genre of all. Superhero movies of the last few years, like this summer's Iron Man, tend to look like the comics on which they are based. Freeze any frame, and in color and composition, it looks just like a page from a mainstream comic book. This style has even made it into non-superhero movies. Audiences saw quite a bit of it this summer in Forbidden Kingdom, for example. While it is impressive, and no doubt pleases the fans of the books a great deal, it has fairly narrow aesthetic range. It starts to appear as though superhero movies are not only obliged to blast the viewer with CGI-generated drama, but are asked to adhere to a pre-published style guide. Hancock doesn't care about any of that, relying as often as not on grainy images shot in actual sunlight, using handheld camera techniques that call to mind the best years of Homicide: Life on the Street or The Wire. The result is an emotional resonance with the three central characters that sustains the viewer through the lag time in the middle of the film.

In the end, you discover that you actually care what happens to these people. Not bad for a B movie, and sweetly satisfying for a summer blockbuster, enjoyed on a hot summer day.

Rating: 8/10

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