Hancock (Will Smith) is a drunk on the street; or is he? Hancock is a superhero; or is he? Hancock has superpowers: he can fly, he has super strength, and all that jazz. However, he is the bane of the city’s existence since every time Hancock “saves the day”, he happens to piss someone off, and he tends to cause millions of dollars worth of damage in the process. One day he saves Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) from death. Ray turns out to be a PR agent, and decides to make it his job to shape Hancock into a proper publicly loved superhero.

This movie is definitely not the typical superhero story. Now this movie has a lot of great points but I definitely must start by saying I agree with Kevin Carr, of FilmSchoolRejects, who call’s the movie a “Humpty Dumpty” film. Apparently it went through numerous revisions, and it was originally given an R rating by the MPAA, and then of course since Will Smith can’t be rated R the studio rushed the print back to the editing room and eventually got their desired PG-13 rating for the movie so as to maximize profit by widening the audience. Personally I want to see the full blown R rated version of this movie because I think this could definitely be a good movie based on the first two thirds of the movie we get to see.

Hancock is definitely a character that will make you look at superheroes in a different light, just like how Wesley Gibson (the graphic novel version) makes you look at super-villains differently. Put yourself in the shoes of a superhero (and let’s forget all those MARVEL comic books for the moment). You have all these powers, and can basically do anything you want, but at the same time you are completely alone since you can’t truly connect with anyone. So what do you do? You become disconnected from the world and just get pissed and become an asshole like Hancock is. So yes I love the idea of this bum of a superhero who is drunk every minute and at the same time stops the bad guys, and threatens to stuff people’s heads up other people’s asses. It’s up there with Chris Nolan giving me this real life Batman as we see in “Batman Begins”.

The director, Peter Berg (also did “The Rundown”[2003] and “Friday Night Lights”[2004]) does a good job for the first seventy percent of the movie. It’s like he had this great character but couldn’t come up with a proper ending. Like yes we get character progression and all, but the movie has a great opening [Hancock being a drunk asshole], a great middle [Hancock turning a new leaf and learning a few things], but the last part was just a waste in my belief. We never got that quintessential superhero saving the world ending, or even anything that would make you feel 100% satisfied with the movie.

The casual moviegoer will most definitely be satisfied with what they see I believe. Because most people just want to see Will Smith fly around and almost smack down an airplane filled with people because he finished that bottle of whiskey too fast or something; and that’s there. It’s just that I think the story wasn’t really finished. Like if they make a part two whatever they do there would easily fit as the final bit of this movie. With that said I hope they don’t make a sequel because Will Smith probably won’t do it, and it would just turn out to be a normal superhero movie where they have a villain that finds out how to hurt Hancock and they have a big fight at the end, etc, etc, etc.

So ye, overall I salute this movie for not walking the easy beaten path of the normal superhero movie. But at the same time it still doesn’t make it the cat’s pajamas of film. The movie will easily keep Smith on track with his $100Million opening weekend streak because it’s a Will Smith movie. But I doubt it will keep good as the month moves on (especially with “The Dark Knight” a fortnight away). Once again if you are at the theatre I rather recommend you check out “Wall-E” or “The Incredible Hulk” if you’ve yet to see those. Save this one for a rental.

IMDB says 6.9/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 36%

I say 6.0/10