With the blockbuster season gathering momentum, it is somewhat depressing that the comic book adaptations and protagonists dominate every Friday’s marquee with faculties out of dreamland, but we can’t blame Hollywood for milking its favourite cash cow. Hancock, this week’s addition to the genre, presents us with a hero who will be frowned upon at the posh club for champions of good, clad in bizarre tight costumes, but it is still in tune with Hollywood’s commendable effort to branch out and diversify, as the studio executives might dryly put it.
John Hancock is a miracle worker whose exploits, often, have real world consequences. He is plagued with self-doubt and suffers from an identity crisis, but, unfortunately, so does the movie itself. For all its merits and its intriguing set-up, Hancock cannot settle on a tone and a mood and comes out as something disturbingly fascinating rather than readily appealing. Adding insult to injury is the fact that it also seems to accommodate two movies in an uneasy coexistence, none of them fully realised.
The first one introduces us to John Hancock (Will Smith), a bum with a hangover on a park bench who happens to be able to fly, hurl cars and generally do all the things Superman can, but without the latter’s staggeringly dull tidiness. He is in L.A, although he has no idea how he got there or why he does not age. He has a calling to right wrongs, but is time and time again embarrassed by the consequences. A heroic stunt of his results in collateral damage worth $7 million, a whale he throws back into the sea lands on a yacht and half the city seems to be suing him for his loud and costly heroics. In a typical day, Hancock saves a man in a car, which is about to be hit by a train, only to cause the train to derail. The man whom he saves, however, is a PR man named Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) who decides to repay his saviour by giving him a full image makeover. The two of them proceed with the plan, which is funny enough, but not in the slapstick way you might expect. Ray even introduces Hancock to his wife Mary (Charlize Theron) who exchanges plentiful meaningful glances with the guest, suggesting some kind of history between them. Hancock’s PR reformation involves saying “thank you”, a lot, and even going voluntarily to prison to serve a term for his reckless exploits, even though he is quickly summoned from there to help with a bank hostage crisis.
The second movie within Hancock begins shortly thereafter and involves a wild change in tone and offers an unexpected respite from director Peter Berg’s hectic in-your-face approach, which keeps proceeding just on the right side of the dreaded “R” rating. As most would have guessed already, it deals with the story of the hero's origins and involves Embrey’s wife Mary: a star of Theron’s magnitude could never be wasted as a bland housewife. The story the script comes up with is as arbitrary as any of its type and therefore cannot be criticised on the grounds of its being utterly preposterous.
Still, even with all the flying, off-putting messages from the screen, there are many pleasures to be had with Hancock. Smith is, as always, his shining and charming self, but he still manages to make his antihero of a superhero serious, thoughtful and genuinely conflicted, while Embrey is more than a capable onscreen companion. Yet even with a comforting twin anchor of this sort, most of the audience will be confused if not necessarily disappointed. The movie deliberately decides not to play by the rules and may suffer for it.
