Hancock

This is a film I've been looking forward to since I first saw the trailers, and despite the negative reviews that it's gathered, I felt that Hancock doesn't disappoint at all. The biggest problem here isn't with the film at all, but how it's been marketed.

The trailers are quite misleading, from what they've shown audiences, it painted Hancock as a purely comedic film. The promotional material shows us Will Smith bounding around as a drunkard superhero, haphazardly trying to do his hero thing with disastrous results, yet most of the big laughs are over with after the first act.

Hancock is in fact a much more dramatic film, and the character himself is a tormented soul, his alcoholism exists not as a vehicle for giggles, but how he deals with his personal demons. People who go to see Hancock for 90 minutes of laughs are going to be disappointed, it really doesn't deliver on what the trailers have promised, but I steadfastly believe it was a good film, and well worth a look.

At it's heart, it is a very worthy addition to the superhero canon, part parody and part introspective into the idea of the loneliness and isolation of someone with superhuman abilities , and one that is more than the sum of its parts. There's a scene where Hancock talks about the first thing he remembers, being in hospital with a fractured head, not knowing who he was and he muses along the lines of "Was I such a bastard that nobody would claim me?" It's quite an emotional sucker-punch of a scene, and certainly a bit of a downer.

Will Smith is absolutely terrific, and gives the role such depth. I imagine that other actors wouldn't take a film like this as seriously, and Smith proves that he simply doesn't do things by halves and gives 110% in a role. The rest of the main cast is filled out nicely by Jason Bateman and Charlize Theron, the latter gives a much better performance that I expected she would.

That's not to say Hancock is without flaw, because at the 90-odd minute run time it feels very short indeed, and I was aching for another 20 minutes or so. As the only character who resembles a main villain, Eddie Marsan really only gets 2 major scenes, and never develops much of a sense of menace as he would if he had more screen time. I guess that Hancock's personal demons are the real villain of the piece, but I think a superhero film is always better for having a strong adversary, and Marsan is completely under-used.

Overall, don't expect a laugh riot from Hancock, but be open to a more dramatically charged film and you should find a surprisingly good experience.