Hancock Review

Hancock is an odd, and somewhat messy film, which I went to see purely because The Dark Knight hasn't been released yet. Let me say that I had no prior knowledge of the film,except that it features Will Smith (Men in Black, I Am Legend) playing an alcoholic superhero, who is obviously quite bad at his job, and that the film is apparently a comedy.

The film opens with a fairly generic chase sequence which confirms the above statement in all of three minutes and serves as one of the four major action sequences, and whilst the sequences has the feeling of Spiderman scene and less of the directing ability, it has two saving features:

The script: This sequence, and indeed all of the film up until the main plot reveal (more on this later), is superbly scripted and features some of the funniest and wittiest dialogue I've seen in a cinema for a very long time.

Will Smith: I often hold Independence Day against Smith (despite the fact that I know it was all Emmerich's fault) but I do know that he is in fact a very good actor, particularly suited for comedy roles (Men in Black I and II), but still able to pull of some semblance of a serious role (I Am Legend, and to a far smaller extent The Pursuit of Happiness); and it is in the role of Hancock that Smith's talent hits me. He pulls of each line and gesture with a wave of charisma that lesser actors would never be able to achieve. Indeed in some places Smith carries the film.
After this sequence's conclusion Hancock spends most of it's time mocking the superhero film genre, Will Smith, anyone who takes these sorts of films seriously and organised crime, whilst occasionally, and regrettably, attempting to carve itself a memorable plot from false hopes, lost dreams, and candy floss. The film continues in this direction, making absolutely no progress in the plot department, and yet still managing to be both witty and likeable, until the major plot twist, which hit everyone in the cinema like a ton of bricks; made of acid.

SPOILER ALERT!

Brace yourself. This plot twist isn't easy to take in, and it ruins what has been otherwise a fairly breezy little comedy which I would have actually recommended. Are you ready? Okay then. Hancock is an alien. Yeah that's right, you read it right, Hancock is an alien! Almost as big of a disappointment as Indiana Jones and the Aliens the Kingdom of the Crystal skulls, isn't it?

Oh, and get this – another character whom I haven't mentioned thus far is not only also an alien, but apparently Hancock's wife. Hancock can't remember any of this because he has amnesia from the last time his wife beat him up.

NO MORE SPOILERS!

Anyway the main problem with this plot twist is that because it's so absurd, unexpected and downright stupid, the film feels that it has to explain itself, a lot. Now I'm all for reasonable and fathomable explanations to Sci-Fi plot devices, but only when they are presented in small, manageable chunks, and the rest of the plot can function alongside these explanations. Unfortunately Hancock completely fails to function as a result of these explanations, and the explanations don't make any sense either.

So, to sum up, Hancock is an extremely broken and disjointed film, which whilst being fairly funny and well scripted up until the halfway point, crumples under the weight of a simple plot twist which would have made the writers of Doctor Who blush.

6/10