This was a very busy weekend for me being on a holiday and also catching up on a lot of stuff. I also managed to catch up with two of my favorite stars Will Smith and Angelina Jolie in Hancock and Wanted respectively. Angelina Jolie’s Wanted will be my next immediate post, but for now let’s take a look at Will Smith’s Hancock. Hancock is a superhero like all superheroes and endowed with similar unlimited powers. Bullets cannot dent him, neither do knives nor needles, and even heavy artillery has no effect on him. He can also fly like Superman, but does not don a mask or a suit like any other superhero you have come across. The major dissimilarity with John Hancock and other superheroes is that Hancock does not behave like a superhero at all. He is arrogant, does not follow the rules or the law of the land, and generally goes about destroying public property like it’s nobody’s business. In the introduction fight sequence he takes a car and pins it to the spiral of a skyscraper and destroys most of a city block in the process. The result is 9 million dollars in cost to the exchequer. It should come as no surprise then that Hancock is hated by the entire city and no one wants his help or even looks forward to it. Enter Jason Bateman, a mild mannered PR executive, but one who can only see good in everyone and it so happens that Hancock rescues him from a train accident and certain death, yet again destroying the train and lots of cars in the process. Jason Bateman now owes his life to Will Smith and invites him over to dinner where he introduces his wife Charlize Theron and his young son Jae Head. Charlize Theron takes an instant disliking to Will Smith and wants her husband to have nothing to do with him henceforth, but Jason Bateman instead wants to start a PR exercise to make Will Smith popular with the city’s populace and so he sets about reforming Will Smith and starts out by convincing Will Smith to turn himself into the cops and undergo sentencing for breaking the law and destroying public property so many times. Will Smith does so and even begins to attend an alcoholics meeting in the prison.
With Will Smith in prison the criminals in the city begin to have a field day and crime increases by 30% in just a couple of days. After a couple of weeks the cops are faced with a hostage situation in a bank and have no other option, but to turn to Will Smith for help. This is the opportunity Jason Bateman and Will Smith have been waiting for and immediately the city is introduced to a new Will Smith, a superhero who is no longer an alcoholic, who is now pleasant and smiling and does not cause destruction to public property and even wears a superhero suit. Will Smith takes care of the crooks holding hostages in the bank and immediately becomes the darling of the city’s populace and the media. Things should have been fine if left in this vein and Will Smith taking care of the city’s problems, but instead the story moves into altogether different terrain after the interval with it being revealed that Charlize Theron too is endowed with the same kind of superpowers Will Smith has and in fact they have a history and a past in which both were married. In fact it is revealed that both are 5000 years old and immortal beings endowed with superpowers, but when they are together they lose their superpowers and become human so as to enable them to lead ordinary human lives. It is also revealed that this humanness allows the bad guys throughout the ages to attack and destroy these immortal beings and the way things stand now is that only Will Smith and Charlize Theron are left of these immortal beings. It is also revealed that Will Smith was attacked 80 years ago and hurt very badly that left him with a cracked skull and amnesia with no recollection of his past or Charlize Theron whatsoever and since then Will Smith has been the grumpy superhero who is endowed with superhero powers, never ages, and never hurts.
Now with Charlize Theron back in the picture the humanness of both Will Smith and Charlize Theron begins to take effect and with both of them losing their power the bad guys manage to attack and hurt Will Smith who is consequently hospitalized. Also, at the hospital are Jason Bateman, Jae Head, and very obviously Charlize Theron and the bad guys launch another attack on Will Smith at the hospital. In the ensuing fight Charlize Theron gets hurt and even dies and at this Will Smith beats up the bad guys and then leaves the premises so as to bring Charlize Theron back to life and she does come back to life as soon as Will Smith leaves and both are immediately endowed with their superhero powers. The movie ends with both maintaining their distance from each other and with Will Smith being the consummate superhero.
Performances are fair to good all through, but Will Smith is Will Smith and holds sway over the proceedings from start to finish. There are lots of good moments overall in the movie, but the only grouch is the ending and the relationship between Charlize Theron and Will Smith are not done convincingly enough and it’s hard to believe their past. Other than that the action is good, special effects are as should be in a big budget Hollywood blockbuster and everything plays out as expected. A tighter script and more convincing about Will Smith’s past and his past relationship with Charlize Theron would have made things much better for Hancock though. Still if you are a Will Smith fan and love the big budget action flick, or are in the mood to see a different kind of a superhero, then Hancock fits the bill perfectly.
