Hancock by Peter Berg (2008)
4 August 2008The trailers looked good for this, and the concept is good, but the film overall fails, especially the last half an hour, which comes out of nowhere, and just doesn’t work. And the constant shaky cam is just annoying instead of artistic. I like the concept, but the film really just falls flat. This could have been just so much better.
John Hancock (Will Smith) is a drunken super hero in Los Angeles, he ends up causing much more damage than good, like ruining tons of police cars in a police chase, and putting a car up on the top of the capital records building. And people just hate his guts. He makes a mess of everything. One day a PR guy named Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) has his cars stopped on the train tracks, and is saved by Hancock, who ends up destroying the train, and many cars. The people are angry, but Ray is happy, and gets Hancock to take him and his wrecked car back to his home, and Ray invites him to dinner. There he meets Ray’s wife Mary (Charlize Theron) and son Aaron (Jae Head) and Mary takes an instant dislike to Hancock. Ray meanwhile gets it in his head that he should help Hancock’s image, to make him into a hero, and when a warrant is placed on Hancock for all the damage he has done, Ray gets Hancock to turn himself in.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
Hancock goes into prison, though he isn’t happy, and the guys he put away try to bully him, so he sticks one man’s head up another man’s ass, not exactly the good behavior he needed to do.
Meanwhile the world outside gets more and more crime, with crime levels raising a huge amount. And finally when a criminal named Red (Eddie Marsan) and his gang take prisoners and have a wounded cop, they get Hancock out of prison to help. He dresses in a costume, and goes and saves the cop, and takes out the gang, and stops Red from blowing up the hostages, sending him to prison.
Then Hancock realizes that Mary too has powers, and the two end up fighting, but she doesn’t want Ray to know. So he wants her to explain to him, because he woke up in the 1920’s in Miami with no memory, and wants to know who she is to him. The two have a huge fight, and when she returns home Ray finds out, and she explains that they have been married for 2000 years, and are built in pairs, but when they get together they lose their powers and become human, so they can live normal lives.
Hancock leaves, and stops a robbery at a liquor store, but he gets shot, and wounded.
Meanwhile Red and his gang have escaped and want to kill Hancock.
Ray and Aaron go to see Hancock, and see Mary explaining things to him, how they have to get far apart, so they can regain their powers. She then gets shot and killed, and Hancock gets up and fights and takes out Red and his gang, and manages to get away, and as he leaves Mary comes back to life.
We end with Mary and Ray happily married, and Hancock now in New York city as a superhero, though he still doesn’t like being called asshole.
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The film was good until the whole story with Charlize Theron starts, as it is never explained, and really makes no sense. And if he should be hero, why shouldn’t she, since she is more powerful than him. And why does she not love him anymore? I don’t know. Seems ridiculous, and the whole last half an hour really did not work for me.
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