Movie Review: Hancock

There are a couple ways you can frame Will Smith's "Hancock." One way is to call it a mess of irredeemable proportions, a movie with so many half-baked ideas, so many different moods that fluctuate at a whim and so confused with its own identity that it dies a thousand deaths in its 135 minute run time.

If you're the type who comes to praise film instead of bury it, you could call it a bold move on all involved, a real risk that doesn't quite pay off, a well acted ensemble piece that suffers from a script that could of used another pass, a movie that tries so hard to please the audience you can see the veins bulging and hear the grunts.

"Hancock" is all these things, but not more. It's a whole lot of everything that equals a big nothing, unfortunately.

The premise: Will Smith is a superhero with amnesia named Hancock, who is an a-hole. The people he saves call him an a-hole. Children on the street call him an a-hole. Even his new friend Ray (Jason Bateman), a PR rep and "good guy" calls him an a-hole. Using broad comedic strokes, director Peter Berg spends the first 20 minutes of the flick making sure the audience feels the same way. Then, the first of many radical tonal shifts kicks in and it's established Hancock is an a-hole because he's lonely. He lives in a trailer a la Riggs from the Lethal Weapon movies. He drinks to kill the pain inside, you see.

Then it's back to the funny, as Ray persuades Hancock to go to prison for being an a-hole in order to rehabilitate his image while Ray's wife (Charlize Theron) looks at Hancock so long and hard that a neon sign flashing "THEY HAVE A HISTORY" every few seconds on the bottom of the screen would have been about as subtle. Hancock goes to jail house AA. He sticks one inmates head up another inmates a-hole. He stays in jail even though he could break out at any time. Ray's kid loves him and gives him a plastic dinosaur.

The third act I won't reveal other than to say THEY HAVE A HISTORY and that history has holes big enough make an average movie goer cringe. The tone shifts from a comedy superhero fight to actual heroics to sacrificial drama and ends with a good old fashioned axe murder played for laughs. Seriously.

I'm honestly not sure if "Hancock" wreaks of studio interference, star ego or what, but when the filmmakers can't commit to a tone, an audience can't commit to laughing or cheering for the hero or any emotion other than casual interest. It's amazing how this movie kills momentum. Whenever the laughs start to roll, the flick gets morose - whenever it builds dramatic intensity, there's a fart joke.

The shame of "Hancock" is if the flick had found a tone, most of the ingredients to deconstruct the superhero genre are right there on the screen, waiting for someone to come along and harness them. Smith gives it his all and Jason Bateman transplants his "Arrested Development" dry wit into the proceedings. He's good, but it doesn't help. Charlize Theron is hot and vapid. If they'd been on the same page, watch out.

But "Hancock" misses and misses big. The flick isn't without it's pleasures, but it's more of a mess than anything else.