Hancock

So perhaps it's not so surprising that dear old Will Smith has jumped on the bandwagon in regards to superhero movies. It's the kind of thing he does, bandwagon jumping, and when I went to the movies today I noticed posters for Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Dark Knight and, of course, Hancock. Not so much a bandwagon as a full blown band-train. There are worse things you could be jumping onto.

The movie is slightly odd though in that it feels a little as though someone had a couple of ideas, neither one of which filled out a movie and so they were joined together. Now let me stress here, though, the two ideas do indeed go together it's just that, apparently, the thrust of the movie is that Hancock is desperate to find out who he is and why he's alone. However, none of that comes across in the first half of the movie, which is actually about a hero who is a loser and fights to better himself.

Two ideas, ya see, and despite the fact they do go together, they are presented as relatively independent.

Will has been stretching his acting for quite some time, trying to prove he's more than just a quick talking black actor, and he's usually pretty bang on the money with his choices because of late his acting has been outstanding and more than just a little melancholic, what with The Pursuit of Happyness and I Am Legend. Hancock is a down and out, alcoholic, very melancholic character. When the movie opens though you have difficulty in understanding why the general populace is pretty sick of a guy who, in order to fight crime, causes nine million dollars worth of damage. The decision to put someone like that in jail is not at all unbelievable, but its quite interesting to see when he's in there that he's there entirely by choice because there is nothing the law can do to actually hold him.

Jason Bateman plays the guy who believes in Hancock, while Charlize Theron plays his wife. Bateman is fantastic, but Theron is outstanding. She is absolutely gorgeous and brings a great deal of elegance to the parts she plays. Generally I have to say that Theron is criminally underused in Hollywood. The twist at the end gives Theron a little more chance to have fun with her character and bring a lot more depth to her, making you go back over the movie and think about her earlier scenes. It's good stuff.

With superhero movies being so prevelent these days, and the desire, particularly from Marvel, but even from DC to a certain degree with the new Batman series, to make those movies so real, Hancock is perhaps the realest of the lot. It's a good movie and a great concept but perhaps its time to remember that these movies are grounded in fantasy to a degree and Hancock, as great as it is, is the end of the scale that we should start to move back from.

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