Hancock (2008) Reviews

What drew me into seeing Hancock in the first place was its idea, which I found one of the most interesting for a film in a while. I am in all honesty not a big fan of Will Smith, but he has given some solid performances so I thought why not.

I have to say that I didn't think Hancock was a bad film as such, it was somewhat underwhelming and I'm sorry to say I do understand the criticisms against it.

Hancock does have a fair number of good points. It is stylishly filmed, with some well above average special effects, the music is dynamic and the directing is solid. The best asset about Hancock is the acting of the three leads.

Will Smith is very commanding, with a lot of subtlety amongst all the wisecracks/gags that don't feel forced(ie.flying under the influence). Charlize Theron shows a glowing presence while also showing a sympathetic side, and Jason Bateman's dry humour contrasts perfectly too.

However, Hancock is a very uneven film. I loved the first half, it was well paced, the script was witty and fresh and the scene where the titular character brings a speeding train to a halt as he can't be bothered to lift the car up from its path is one of the better and relevant scenes of the film.

It is in the second half where Hancock is less than successful. Here the film starts to drag, the script becomes soapy and heavily melodramatic and the film has one of the daftest twists of any film not to have M Night Shyamalan's name on it.

The story's tone isn't the only asset to feel uneven, the script is too, it has wit and freshness in the first half, but becomes mawkish in the second. I also felt that there were only three likable characters(Smith's, Theron's and Bateman's) and the others I barely noticed, with the villain especially flat.

So all in all, an uneven film but not a necessarily bad one. 5/10 Bethany Cox

To be honest, if this movie was released nowadays (circa 2020), I'm pretty sure he would be a big flop. Indeed, back then in 2013, Will Smith finally got his first big flop, 'After Earth' and I'm afraid Will Smith's days of massive box domination are other (ok, 'Wild Wild West' was pretty bad as well but, back then, he did manage to recover from the blow but I don't see it happening this time). Anyway, coming back to our main feature, in my opinion, it was a rather typical Will Smith production. As usual, he picked up a standard blockbuster genre (here, the super hero flick) and managed to add something else to set it apart from the rest. On paper, it sounded half lame and half interesting and it could have been a huge flop but, somehow, it still mostly worked though. Indeed, I thought the whole thing was actually rather intriguing, the way it was dealing with the ups and downs of a basically depressed super-hero. Of course, it was still a blockbuster and the story was therefore far from being really satisfactory or really thoughtful whatsoever. Still, even though it was nothing really amazing, I think it is still a rather well made and fairly entertaining blockbuster and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you have a weak spot for Will Smith.

I thought "Hancock" was going to be pretty bad. The previews looked like nothing but ridiculousness and just plain dumb. I never thought I would feel the way I did after watching it.

I surprised at how good it was. The story was well put together, and actually made a lot of sense. Along with the humor, cast, and everything necessary for a very good film. I laughed hysterically throughout a lot of the scenes. The cast was all there, co-starring Jason Bateman and Charlize Theron. I personally can't recall any major flaws. I can't give it a 9 or 10, because it's obviously nowhere near perfect. Just a few barely noticeable cons.

I may be saying a lot, but "Hancock" might be one of the best comedies of 2008. It comes highly recommended by me. Extremely good film.

8.2/10

''I gotta wonder what kind of a bastard I must have been, that nobody was there to claim me. I mean, I am not the most charming guy in the world, so I've been told, but...nobody?''

A hard-living superhero who has fallen out of favor with the public enters into a questionable relationship with the wife of the public relations professional who's trying to repair his image.

Will Smith: John Hancock

''Call me an asshole one more time.''

The only reason I did not award this Hancock one star is that the underlying theme of redemption is a commendable goal. I can even honestly say the first third of Hancock was quite entertaining, but it begins to spiral downwards fast. For lack of a better word, the movie became just predictable and flat. And it's hard to imagine Will Smith in a sub standard flick.
John Hancock is far from your average superhero, but the trailer tells you this in itself. What the trailer doesn't tell you, is that after the rogue anti-hero drunkenly parades about as advertised, he has to develop a backbone plot and make the film go from a clever spin on a hot- ticket genre to an emotional action drama. There are entertaining and unique elements that make Hancock shine in ways I guess, but they end up secondary to a emotional occurrence and a two-faced plot concept.
It's easy to be deceived these days by the shear unruly star-power that is Will Smith, especially when he's attached to a project dealing with superheroes, a genre that has been a cash blockbuster vehicle. He's talented no matter what he does, and in that regard, Hancock is stupidly enjoyable. While I personally felt his character was too much of an a**hole as the script so frequently and unoriginally puts it, that doesn't mean Smith isn't good at it. He's just a great hero no matter the story or pile of rubbish he stars in.

To quickly summarize, Smith plays Hancock, a lonely, drunken jerk with Superman powers and a public approval rating of zero. When he saves Ray's (Jason Bateman) life, Ray offers his services as a P.R. consultant and the two work to change his image. Eventually, you get to Hancock's back story and some strange but obvious twists take the film down a different path that to explain would be a major spoiler.
So from the perspective of a producer that has a decent script with a highly marketable concept written by some nobodies and with a director (Peter Berg) attached whose best action credit is 2007's The Kingdom I would definitely want to sign someone to play Hancock who is going to guarantee me top spot at the box office. Well, result. Smith is such a proved commodity with an amazing streak of top first weekend box office spots that he could get any contract he wants and he should do that.

''People should love you. They really should, okay? And I want to deliver that for you. It's the least that I can do. You're a superhero. Kids should be running up to you, asking for your autograph, people should be cheering you on the streets...''

After Smith, the marks for Hancock are pretty much in the middle lane. The CGI and Berg's directing style is too sloppy for what should be a clean-cut summer blockbuster. His refusal to use any camera stabilizing device works for a few scenes, but most of the time it's just dizzying and the close-ups become dizzyingly obnoxious. The plot concept, which paints a picture of Hancock as a hero and then fills it in with the origin story later instead of the other way around, makes for an interesting affect, but instead of enlightening what we know about Hancock, it ends up taking the film in another direction entirely. While you might think this movie would leave you with themes about turning one's life around and becoming the best you can be, that gets glossed over and you're left stupefied.

Altogether it just feels that something is missing, the plot requires more action. It turns out that PR man's wife happens also to be a demigod, who used to be married to our hero, but had to distance herself from him because it was lethal for both of them. You see, they both lose their respective powers in each others presence, they are fatal catalysts to each other, an Achilles heel, a weakness.
So, the she-hero stays with the PR man, while Hancock will continue saving the world. In the mean time, we, in the comfort of our entertainment facilities, experience the sublime, squalid form of so called entertainment.
Let me answer the big questions in the following way. Suppose we view Hancock as a symbol, for example, as a symbol of America. The US saves the world by acting as world protector, unilaterally exercising its power, flying hither and dither (think Afghanistan, Iraq). US sticks bad guy's heads into bad guy's butts (think Abu Ghraib). The damage US inflicts onto 'rogue' nations, lost human lives are weighed against the potential good. Meanwhile, we experience the sublime on TV projected by CNN, comfortably resting on sofas and lazy-boy chairs with popcorn and beer.

''Your head is going up his ass, his head is going up his ass, and you get the short end of the straw, cause your head is going up my ass!''

I think, Vincent and Vince Gilligan could do much better with their plot by simply following major event of the latest US wars, using US = Hancock symbolism. And Will Smith? - yes, camera loves him it seems. But for me, it is a memory of Six Degrees of Separation that attracts me like a moth to the flame, to the cinema. It is regrettable, that after amassing such personal success, wealth and authority, he produces such low grade output.

Now, to answer the big question – Do I regret seeing this film? The answer is yes and no; and not because of the film itself, not because its entertainment value, nor because it made me better or relaxed me and helped me to get through the day. It made me realize yet again that star power and big budgets do not necessarily equal a film of any consequence, of quality and indeed depth and originality.

''Call me crazy one more time.''

"People should love you. They really should, okay? And I want to deliver that for you. It's the least that I can do. You're a superhero. Kids should be running up to you, asking for your autograph, people should be cheering you on the streets..."

Stale. Vapid. Hollow. Offensive. Inconsistent. Illogical. Lame. Fluffy. These are the words that popped into my head while watching Hancock; a nonsense hodgepodge of intriguing ideas attempting to offer a unique twist on the conventional superhero movie.

2008 appears to be the ideal year for disappointing superhero movies to crawl out and subsequently die. This film was released in the shadow of Doug Liman's second-rate Jumper. Both lethally suffer from awful screenplays and a contemptible, self-indulgent, selfish hero. Hancock works from a banal and standard script, seemingly borrowing various facets from other superheroes. There's a shoestring plot on which to hang the action sequences and the (failed) humour. Hancock is also excruciating, dull, unimaginative and unengaging. Forget about this being as emotionally gripping as The Pursuit of Happyness, as delightfully entertaining as Bad Boys, or as funny and appealing as Men in Black - this is pure preposterous tosh!

John Hancock (Smith) is a bitter, disillusioned superhero. He can fly, he's impervious to any sort of damage, he has super strength...well, I'm sure you get the idea. Hancock has one major problem: his public image. Every time he saves someone's life or catches a criminal he inadvertently causes a great deal of damage to the city of Los Angeles. When Hancock isn't angering the general public, he's a drunken bum. Enter public relations professional Ray Embrey (Bateman) who, after being saved by Hancock, takes it upon himself to reinvent and improve Hancock's public image in order to make him more of a crowd pleaser. A warrant is issued for the arrest of Hancock (as his latest stunt caused $9 million of damage), and Ray persuades the superhero to turn himself in willingly. This begins Hancock's inner journey from public nuisance to public idol.

Hancock is an abundantly flawed superhero escapade. I honesty have no idea where I should begin...
For starters, Hancock isn't a sufficiently developed character nor is he anyone we wish to root for. His origin story isn't told until the second half. His back-story comes far too late to make a difference to the character (who's established as selfish and contemptible). Ideally, the film should allow its audience to understand Hancock's motivations, as well as the reasons for his bad attitude and callousness from the very first frame. When is the origin story introduced in Superman: The Movie or Tim Burton's original Batman? It's the first thing we need to see in order to flesh out a character and provide detail into this character's life. Flashback, montage...the script needs to allow us to identify with him before he opens his mouth.
In I Am Legend, we empathise with Will Smith's character from the very beginning because we're given a reason to care about him. In The Pursuit of Happyness he played a poor man trying to raise his son. We pity him and want to see him succeed. In Hancock he calls bystanders pricks, drinks himself to oblivion, doesn't care about anyone but himself, and his social skills are putrid. The heroics he occasionally displays just aren't good enough.

The dialogue is also quite offensive. In the opening sequence he rips the roof off a getaway vehicle, revealing three men. Hancock proceeds to joke about the lack of girls in the car. The insinuation is that they are gay (even when most criminals we see arrested on TV are men anyway!). This further manifests itself later on in the film. Ray holds up a series of comic books, all featuring white men in standard superhero outfits. First words that escape Hancock's mouth? "Homo. Homo in red. Norwegian homo". The gay community would probably have something to say about this... I wonder what Hancock would've said if he was shown comic books featuring African American superheros. Would he call them niggers? I'd guess not, as this would alienate Smith's race. "Homo" is the only slur said by Hancock throughout the entire film. When he's approached by African Americans, he doesn't use a slur at all. He doesn't even use a slur when he fights Latinos at the beginning. To the writers it's a crime to use a slur for African Americans or Latinos, yet it's perfectly acceptable to do so for gays. How insensitive!

This point brings us onto the rest of the script issues... The film's structure is unbelievably weak. It's as if the screenwriters had brainstormed ideas for the major plot points but could only come up with pulp to connect them. These plot points are just mashed together, creating an extraordinarily messy final product. The screenwriters seemingly expect us to fill in the blanks.
Even though this is a summer blockbuster, Hancock offers barely any action. Okay, so they wanted this to be more of a drama. But why did they market this as an action film? Why did they release it during the summer season when action films are all the rage? The script also never manages to offer a clear-cut villain until the dreadful final third. This villain is weak and his entrance is far too late.

Logic appears to be an enemy of the screenplay as well. At one stage Hancock tosses a child up into the air. On the child's way back down to the ground he's caught by Hancock. This should have caused incredible internal damage, yet the kid is just fine. Another illogical instance: Hancock flies out of prison temporarily. The alarm is immediately raised. Seriously, bullets bounce off this guy. Why in hell would the police even bother wasting manpower and bullets trying to recapture him? An alarm would do absolutely no good. During the film's climax Hancock is hurt pretty badly after being shot and stabbed. He falls out of a high window (third or fourth storey) onto the roof of a bus and he's just fine? There's also another character with powers identical to Hancock's, and they don't want their powers revealed (they even threaten Hancock with penalty of death if he spills the beans). Yet this character engages Hancock in combat in broad daylight with hundreds of witnesses. In addition to logic frequently being defied, inconsistencies are abundant. The entire story about the other character with Hancock's powers is muddled up! I'd be wasting time (and spoiling things) by going any further.

Then there's the matter of product placement...oh how Hancock appears to adore product placement! There are Ray Ban sunglasses (mentioned by name!), a store with all product labels facing the camera (with close-ups of the products), an ad for the Showtime series Dexter, gratuitous YouTube plugs, and there are even FedEx boxes being displayed!

For a modern movie, the special effects are somewhat dull as well. Peter Berg directed 2007's The Kingdom...and again brings his trademark shaky camera technique to the table. He attempts to give the CGI sequences a grittier, more realistic edge. This fails in the first scene - an inebriated Hancock flying towards a highway police pursuit exhibits embarrassing phoniness. However, the only thing I can say in the film's favour is in regards to its entertainment value. There are sporadic instances of good action scenes and funny moments. But these all happen within the first 30 minutes. Beyond that, everyone is on autopilot. The enjoyably frenetic opening sequence is of the standard we expected to pervade the rest of the film. Sadly, it's a one-off instance. A character also watches a few clips of Hancock's most infamous misdemeanours on YouTube. A few amusing clips are played and Will Smith's reactions are priceless.
On the whole, though, the performances are uniformly mediocre. Smith doesn't bring an ounce of emotion to the table and Charlize Theron is wooden. Bateman is at least watchable. He disperses a few amusing lines of dialogue. The rest of the cast aren't even worth mentioning.

Hancock is a massive disappointment no matter where you turn. It seems like the film is actually two films rolled into one. The first is the tale of the anti-hero learning to be a defender of truth, justice, and the American Way. It's the more interesting of the two. The second piece is muddled and disjointed as the screenplay provides revelations about Hancock's origin. This aspect has the scope of a Shakespearean tragedy and cannot effectively be addressed in the 45 minutes allotted to it. Both halves had potential, and should have been properly expanded into separate movies. By compressing them into a single unit, the story suffers as a whole. Hancock is stupid and hollow, yet it does at least offer a moderately entertaining experience.

" I gotta wonder what a kind of a bastard I must have been, that nobody was there to claim me. I mean, I am not the most charming guy in the world, so I've been told, but...nobody?"

3.6/10

La película no está mal y Will Smith hace un papel aceptable. No hay mucho más que decir, salvo que los efectos son espectaculares -algo que uno da por descontado en una producción de estas características y que ya se ha visto en la serie Héroes, por ejemplo- y que esperaba una vuelta de tuerca y encontré otra. Eso estuvo bien. Claro, Charlize Theron está muy bien... en un papel que le queda bastante chico.
Por lo demás el relato es fallido en varias partes y ciertos aspectos de la trama tienen una justificación bastante débil: amnesia del personaje, circularidad del amor, tendencia al bien (aún en la bajeza de carácter), etc.
Para ver un domingo y evitar el bajón está bien.

Stunning was the director's ability to end a good idea for a movie.
The impression we have is that he used all the money available for production in the early scenes, and then had to make the film more humble in the last minutes of projection.
The film starts with an idea and if go forwarding, until from a given time, changes the course of history, becoming a film totally meaningless and without logical explanation of events.
Neither the charisma of Will Smith is present, the forced expressions, trying to make a character who dissociasse of their previous characters is failure.
Finally, a film that will certainly not worth being assisted.

____

Incrível foi a capacidade do diretor de acabar com uma idéia boa para um filme.
A impressão que temos é que ele usou todo o dinheiro disponível para produção nas primeiras cenas, e então teve que tornar o filme mais humilde nos últimos minutos da projeção.
O filme inicia com uma idéia e vai se encaminhando, até que a partir de um determinado momento, se altera o rumo da história, tornando-se um filme totalmente sem sentido e sem explicação lógica dos acontecimentos.
Nem o carisma de Will Smith se faz presente, as caretas forçadas, tentando apresentar um personagem que dissociasse dos seus personagens anteriores é falha.
Enfim, um filme que com certeza não vale a pena ser assistido.

Ok let's get one thing straight Will Smith could play Satan and still be charming. I mean come on' a complete ass hole of a superhero and you still want to root for him. If anybody else played that role the movie would have been a cataclysmic failure. Dave Chappelle was considered for this film and it has been reported that the script has been around for 10 yes 10 (T-E-N) years!
Anyways enough of the movie trivia overall this movie had a great premise. An non caring, alcoholic, destructive, selfish superhero who obtains a PR (Jason Bateman who apparently will be type cast for the rest of his life as "that guy" to play) to help his rep. Yep there are not nearly enough movies like this. "Jumper" helped with this new genre of superheros (who tend to think only about themselves), but it still had this sorta "7th Heaven" or "Dawson's Creek" feel to it. "Hancock" just feels more adult right of the start. Even though the movie has a PG-13 rating. (Hancock! PG-13 I thought it was a porn title at first...)
"Hancock" has everything that enables it to be a huge $100 million plus summer blockbuster. So why have all the critics been split on the movie...because the story takes a bizarre turn when Charlize "Aeon" Theron character enters the movie. There is something obvious between Hancock and her character but when it is explained you are either blow away in awesomeness or in disgust/slight confusion. I personally hate spoilers, (all apologizes if you are can relate. DO NOT READ THE NEXT LINE!!) but it ends with a whimper not a bang.
Overall as bad as I may have made "Hancock" sound it is a pretty good flick. Everything almost works well together except for the last 45 minutes. The script spent 10 years floating around Hollywood another few months of rewriting would not have hurt. I wouldn't say a must see, but really who isn't a fan of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air".

Tell me so I can beat him down personally then force then to make them repeatedly listen to "He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper" album while watching "Wild Wild West".

will Smith stars as John Hancock. Not your average superhero who at first is drunk then realizes that there is more to life and he is not alone. However, this more serious look at superheroes is quite interesting.the first 30 minutes of the movie seems to be an action/adventure but then turns to a serious look at life through a superheroes eyes.

Jason Bateman who seems to be a regular in peter Berg's film seems to be Hancock's saving grace. and himself is having issues at work with "changing the world". When Hancock and Ray (Bateman) collide, people Get mad because of the way Hancock handles the situation and then ray stands up for him. thus, being one of the many turning points in the movie. there is 2 big twists that happen in the movie and are very hard to explain with out ruining it for the people who want to see so i will leave up to you guys to go and see and decide for yourselves.