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'Hancock' Nearly Saved By Smith

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By DAVID GERMAIN

The Associated Press

Published: July 2, 2008

"Hancock" demonstrates why Will Smith gets paid the big bucks.

The guy has owned Fourth of July weekends with huge debuts for some passable but not-so-great movies ("Independence Day," "Men in Black II"), and he'll likely do it again with this foul-mouthed-misanthrope-as-superhero flick.

"Hancock" has a crisp, entertaining set-up - Smith as a superhero who hates everyone and is hated in turn for the chaos he causes. With nowhere to go after that, the filmmakers let the story devolve into a lame variation of the very action genre they aimed to flip on its head.

But none of that matters. It's Will Smith, and it's another passable movie, largely because he IS Will Smith.

Los Angeles may loathe its resident dude with superpowers, but Smith makes you love him, from the moment he wakes up on a bus bench, surly and hung over, and snaps crabbily at the little kid who roused him with the simple call to arms, "Hancock? Bad guys?"

Smith is the closest to a sure thing Hollywood has, the most likable, bankable star around. Because Smith inspires such kinship, you wish "Hancock" director Peter Berg and screenwriters Vy Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan had provided better material to let him show off his charm.

The movie opens with great promise, offering a solid action sequence blended with a nice character study. Smith's Hancock, a man with no memory of his past before waking up with superpowers in a hospital 80 years earlier, grudgingly puts his gifts to work again, stopping thugs in a high-speed shootout with police.

He does it in typical Hancock style, with no regard for public safety and causing millions in property damage, to the point that authorities gripe publicly that he should go "help" some other city for a while.

One day, he steps in and indifferently rescues earnest public-relations man Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), who surprises Hancock by actually thanking him, profusely.

Ray takes it on himself to do an image-makeover for Hancock, persuading him to try behaving like a hero so the public will see him that way. That means finessing his powers, which include flying that usually ends with landings so hard they pulverize the pavement.

"Landing is your superhero handshake," Ray tells Hancock. "Don't come in too hot, don't come in too boozy, and don't land on the $100,000 Mercedes."

Ray's wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), thinks it's all a bad idea, wishing Hancock would stay out of their lives.

"Hancock" seems to be charting fresh, smart territory amid Hollywood's formulaic superhero tales. It's amusing and touching to see the awkward kernels of humanity Smith's character reveals as he tries to treat people with respect and decency.

But then the movie turns from a moody, darkly funny character piece trimmed out with a bit of engaging action and veers into a poor impersonation of a standard superhero flick.

A plot twist that's not very surprising reveals details of Hancock's past, the movie laying out a limp backstory that the most insignificant of comic books could best in terms of superhero "mythology."

After that, "Hancock" is mostly bruising action, the sequences sturdy but unspectacular.

MOVIE REVIEW

Hancock **

MOVIE BOARD RATING: PG-13; some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and language

STARS: Will Smith, Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman

DIRECTOR: Peter Berg

LOCATION: See movie times, Page 8, for local showtimes.

PLOT SUMMARY: A superhero with image problems tries to clean up his act.

RUNNING TIME: 92 minutes

ON THE WEB: www.hancock-

movie.com

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