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movie review: Hancock
Aug. 2nd, 2008 10:57 pmInteresting movie, I enjoyed it. An entertaining, if not entirely effective, conglomeration of parts: quirky, iconoclastic, offbeat, “complexly ornery” (-reviewer Rob Gonsalves). It strikes me as a movie that suffered a bit from passing through multiple hands and differing concepts—maybe one producer wanted to do a dark comedic parody of the superhero genre (which is how it starts), and another wanted to do a standard superhero blockbuster (there’s about one scene of that) and another wanted to do a mythology storyline like “Heroes” with a touch of “Unbreakable”. As a result, they don’t develop the latter part of the story and its ramifications as much as I wanted. There were some intriguing emotional possibilities in there, and I actually wish the movie had been a little longer in order to probe that territory. The ending fairly screamed “sequel” or even “series pilot”—and if one got made, I’d definitely watch it, in the hopes that some of that unexplored territory would emerge.
Despite the parody tone of the beginning, it strikes me as one of the more realistic treatments of super-strength I’ve seen—Hancock is constantly shattering pavement when he lands, breaking cars and windows with casual gestures because the world just isn’t built to handle his strength, and he just doesn’t care enough to rein it in. The enmity he earns from police and public strikes me as equally realistic. It’s superheroing minus the fantasy—in that sense, of course, clearly indebted to the Watchmen, Miller’s Batman, the Elementals, and other comics that bent the cleancut superhero tropes to fit the gritty, disappointing, unheroic frame of known reality.
From the beginning, you can’t help but enjoy this dilapidated, disreputable antihero, unshaven and Flying Under the Influence, as he slouches and staggers and curses his way through “heroic” feats that mean well but (ouch! that stings!) do more damage than the actual criminals incur. Hancock’s motivation is both simple and convincing: he is lonely, rejected by the world because he’s different and dangerous, and he doesn’t have the first clue how to make other people like him, so he has ceased to try. The unusually earnest PR man whose life he saves gives him a glimpse into the emotional alternative of belonging and family, and convinces him to try to mend his ways. (Meanwhile, the PR man’s wife is uneasy about having Hancock around.) After a stint in rehab, Hancock shaves (with his fingers), squeezes into a snazzy supersuit, and manages not to botch a rescue. The movie briefly looks like it’s going to get all belatedly noble and Jerry Bruckheimer on us. Fortunately, it doesn’t.
I did see the “big twist” a while before it arrived—not because it was necessarily predictable, but mainly because Charlize Theron (as the PR man’s wife) is a good enough actress that it became clear that her unease was not springing from the obvious reasons. Unlike the majority of reviewers, I don’t think the movie falls apart after that sudden swerve; I think that’s exactly where it gets more interesting, just when it’s starting to look like the straightforward parody has turned into a (yawn) straightforward Hollywood redemption and heroism story. It develops some potential depth, some emotional complexity which (in between requisite intervals of demolishing stuff) is handled with surprising delicacy. It examines how we define our heroes, what we expect of them and how easily they can fall from favor. It touches most gently on race issues, implying rather than spelling out. It raises and then complexifies and then backs off from what could have been a really interesting love triangle. And even the fact that it is a mishmash of parts, inconsistent and rough at the seams, is part of its appeal, because it disdains formula, keeps the viewer off balance, and keeps the texture varied. The contrast of the over-the-top comedic aspects, the real-life aspects, and the serious and thoughtful dramatic elements created a total effect that was enjoyably surreal, in which I was never quite sure what they were after or where they were going with it, but looked forward to finding out. I came out of it with a smile on my face and some interesting possibilities rolling around in my head, and by that it was worth seeing. And if nothing else, Will Smith fills out a supersuit quite well...
Despite the parody tone of the beginning, it strikes me as one of the more realistic treatments of super-strength I’ve seen—Hancock is constantly shattering pavement when he lands, breaking cars and windows with casual gestures because the world just isn’t built to handle his strength, and he just doesn’t care enough to rein it in. The enmity he earns from police and public strikes me as equally realistic. It’s superheroing minus the fantasy—in that sense, of course, clearly indebted to the Watchmen, Miller’s Batman, the Elementals, and other comics that bent the cleancut superhero tropes to fit the gritty, disappointing, unheroic frame of known reality.
From the beginning, you can’t help but enjoy this dilapidated, disreputable antihero, unshaven and Flying Under the Influence, as he slouches and staggers and curses his way through “heroic” feats that mean well but (ouch! that stings!) do more damage than the actual criminals incur. Hancock’s motivation is both simple and convincing: he is lonely, rejected by the world because he’s different and dangerous, and he doesn’t have the first clue how to make other people like him, so he has ceased to try. The unusually earnest PR man whose life he saves gives him a glimpse into the emotional alternative of belonging and family, and convinces him to try to mend his ways. (Meanwhile, the PR man’s wife is uneasy about having Hancock around.) After a stint in rehab, Hancock shaves (with his fingers), squeezes into a snazzy supersuit, and manages not to botch a rescue. The movie briefly looks like it’s going to get all belatedly noble and Jerry Bruckheimer on us. Fortunately, it doesn’t.
I did see the “big twist” a while before it arrived—not because it was necessarily predictable, but mainly because Charlize Theron (as the PR man’s wife) is a good enough actress that it became clear that her unease was not springing from the obvious reasons. Unlike the majority of reviewers, I don’t think the movie falls apart after that sudden swerve; I think that’s exactly where it gets more interesting, just when it’s starting to look like the straightforward parody has turned into a (yawn) straightforward Hollywood redemption and heroism story. It develops some potential depth, some emotional complexity which (in between requisite intervals of demolishing stuff) is handled with surprising delicacy. It examines how we define our heroes, what we expect of them and how easily they can fall from favor. It touches most gently on race issues, implying rather than spelling out. It raises and then complexifies and then backs off from what could have been a really interesting love triangle. And even the fact that it is a mishmash of parts, inconsistent and rough at the seams, is part of its appeal, because it disdains formula, keeps the viewer off balance, and keeps the texture varied. The contrast of the over-the-top comedic aspects, the real-life aspects, and the serious and thoughtful dramatic elements created a total effect that was enjoyably surreal, in which I was never quite sure what they were after or where they were going with it, but looked forward to finding out. I came out of it with a smile on my face and some interesting possibilities rolling around in my head, and by that it was worth seeing. And if nothing else, Will Smith fills out a supersuit quite well...
