Hancock

Hancock (Smith) is a derelict, amnesiac, foul-mouthed and alcoholic superhero most often is found sleeping on one city bench or another after the latest in a series of drunken benders. Well-meaning citizens can wake him up to address emergencies, but he's a sloppy and resentful hero at best, one whose total disregard for collateral property damage makes him a public menace on the scale of the Hulk.

Then Hancock saves the life of idealistic public-relations man Ray Embrey (Bateman), who pleads for the chance to rehabilitate Hancock's image. Ray means well, and he seems able to get through to Hancock's better nature in a way that years of being called an a--hole by random strangers has not--but there's something odd in the way Ray's wife Mary (Theron) looks at the ramshackle hero, something that screams "Backstory! Backstory!" at a volume you don't need Superman's ears to hear. What are the odds that Hancock's attempt to turn his life around will sync up, for no reason other than wild coincidence, with the very phenomenon that made him what he is? Depends on how obvious you're willing to be. Gee, it's too bad he didn't hire one of the 10 zillion other PR guys on this planet!

A rehabilitative stint in prison and subsequent parole the instant civic emergency beckons both take place without any hint that Hancock has had a trial or an appeal or even a probation hearing. He goes to prison when it's convenient and leaves when it's convenient, with no hint of consequences. Next to Hancock's L.A., the legal system of Gotham City is delicate with nuance.

The saga leads up to a violent, bloody, downright Wagnerian battle in a hospital, one that becomes the latest in a series of jarring tone shifts suggesting that nobody involved with this thing had any idea whether they were making a slapstick comedy, a lighthearted adventure, a tragedy or an epic tale of superhuman redemption. Except that the Hancock comedy is only funny in fits, the adventure bears no real sense of danger, the tragedy lands with the weight of a drifting feather, and Hancock's redemption bears about as much emotional weight as any turning point in the life of a guy who we never liked all that much in the first place.

SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

It's tempting to see racism in the phenomenon of a summer filled with cinematic superheroes where the three major white guys, Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne and even Bruce Banner, are all brilliant scientists or captains of industry, and the one black guy is an irresponsible drunkard who goes postal if anybody calls him a--hole. (There's also a red guy, Hellboy, but he's one of a kind and has no constituency to imply anything about, unless you're thinking of demons.) The best thing you could say about Hancock, based on the utter lack of any reference to the character's color, is that the ugly implication seems to be entirely accidental, the unfortunate result of the colour-blind casting of a big star who has been seeking out frothy special-effects movies for much of his career, and who also happens to be, by the way, black. The very worst thing you can say is that the apparent failure to consider unfortunate resonances is very much in line with the apparent failure to consider much of anything else, including logic or consistency.

Take the central twist in Hancock, that Mary is an immortal superbeing herself, married to Hancock in the days before his amnesia, and sharer of the attribute that leads both of these titans to become mortal and vulnerable to harm in each other's presence. We are told that they lived together for centuries ... becoming mortal whenever they were in close proximity. That deserves repetition. They lived together for centuries, becoming mortal whenever they were in close proximity. And again. They lived together for centuries, becoming mortal whenever they were in close proximity. Think about what you just read for five seconds, and take comfort in the knowledge that you evidently thought about it five seconds more than the screenwriters did.

Sure, the mortality they're talking about may be only vulnerability to physical harm, rather than to the march of time, but then there's another problem, one that brings up the color-blind casting again. We're told that the man who became Hancock and the woman now known as Mary Embrey have not seen each other since Hancock lost his memory 80 years ago. At that point they were living together as man and wife in Miami. Now think about that. A guy who looks like Will Smith and a woman who looks like Charlize Theron living together as man and wife, in deep-south Miami, in the 1930s. Think about that for five seconds and again, you've given the whole story more consideration than anybody involved. Seriously: That's the kind of backstory you attempt only if your target audience's memory goes back only as far as the last explosion on screen.

Akiva Goldsman, who served as one of the producers on Hancock, and who has a bit part as Executive Number One, has actually been involved with some good movies in his career, and he was the recipient of an Academy Award for writing A Beautiful Mind. But after writing the godawful Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, he should have been wise enough never to go near another superhero property again. Hancock is not quite as bad as those two, but it's nothing to be proud of, either. Fear his next project, Jonah Hex.

-Adam-Troy