ALL summer we've been watching stars and their stunt doubles risk their lives for us. They brawl over the fate of mankind in metal suits, zip across Gotham City in pursuit of the Joker and race across the tops of trains to save their sidekicks: but c
ouldn't they sometimes show that with great power comes great irresponsibility?
This action-figure syndrome had me wondering how to react if I were constantly under threat from villains with my worst interests at heart. Rather than going all blankly determined and zipping up into some complicated thigh boots, I like to believe I'd be a lot more like Will Smith in Hancock: a boozed-up, messy, passed-out drunk on a park bench.
In Peter Berg's satire, Hancock is an abrasive, misanthropic man of steel whose sidekick is a gallon of whisky, shaves himself with his fingernails and has "anger management issues". When he finally flies into action, he wreaks so much destruction that Los Angeles crowds boo and call for his arrest. But not before he saves Ray (Jason Bateman) – possibly the first philanthropic publicist – from a fatal train collision, which the train doesn't survive.
In return, Ray offers to put Hancock's reputation into rehab, even though his wife Mary (Charlize Theron) isn't keen on having Hancock anywhere near her. Hancock understands her hesitation. Eighty years ago he lost his memory and woke up with a scar on his head in a hospital. "You gotta wonder," he says bitterly, "what kind of bastard I must have been that nobody was there to claim me."
Some of Ray's rebranding exercises are pretty amusing, like training Hancock in superhero etiquette so that he asks politely before rescuing someone, stops crushing the pavement when he lands, and says "thank you" or "good job" even when the police are not doing one. But he also has to agree to surrender to the authorities, voluntarily enter prison, attend weekly group therapy sessions and wait for the public to summon him back into service. When that call finally comes, Hancock shaves his stubble and puts on a new form-fitting suit in order to handle a hostage situation in a bank, in the style of Richard Pryor if he was given the chance to join the X-Men.
The only thing drunker than Hancock is whoever wrote the film's headshaking twist, an atonal device that produces a superbad explanation for all that's gone before that M Night Shyamalan might nod at approvingly. It's not giving much away to say that Mary is a key part of this development, because Theron keeps doing the kind of shifty eye-dart work more often seen in an afternoon episode of Murder She Wrote. This is acting that screams "I Have A Secret", but when that secret is revealed, the film loses any superpowers it had.
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