He's rude, surly, indifferent. He ties up traffic. Sure, he stops bad guys and saves lives, but he destroys millions of dollars' worth of city infrastruture and private property in the process. Tossing a beached whale back into the Pacific, he accidentally hurls the behemoth straight into an unsuspecting sailboat. He's a screw-up.
And Hancock, deftly directed by Peter Berg from a screenplay by Vy Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan - and not based on a comic book, but certainly inspired by more than a few - wastes no time in showing the guy at his worst: First seen, he's curled up on a street bench, ringed by empty bottles of cheap whiskey. When a kid tries to wake him to tell him about a high-speed chase on an L.A. freeway, Hancock, hungover, sneers.
A rollicking tale of rehabilitation and redemption, rife with cool special effects, Hancock is smart and surprisingly raunchy (for a PG-13). It boasts yet another terrific turn from Smith. The homegrown superstar (his production company is named Overbrook) brings querulous humor and a palpable pathos to the role of a problem-plagued superhero. When he meets, and saves, Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), a PR exec whose car gets stuck on a railway crossing, Hancock, who's led a lonely, angry life, discovers what friendship, family and personal responsibility is all about.
If that sounds corny, it is - and isn't. Hancock mixes its sappier sentiments and moral uprightness with doses of edgy, dark comedy, literal and visual profanity and, midway through, a major, major surprise twist. There's a scene in Embrey's house in which Hancock drops in and picks up various kitchen utensils and frying pans, that's both a slapstick feat and a slap-in-the-face for anyone who thought they knew where Hancock was heading.
