Mr. Beaks Sifts Through the Wreckage of HANCOCK

Shorter than LAST ACTION HERO and less of a "WTF?" jumble than HUDSON HAWK (a movie I dearly love all the same), Will Smith's HANCOCK is the mess that results from the world's biggest movie star getting "edgy" on a studio's dime. Blessed with a great hook ("What if Superman were a homeless, alcoholic misanthrope?"), but (presumably) cursed with too much interference from the same creative team that neutered I AM LEGEND, Big Will's attempt at superhero revisionism is a moment-to-moment affair - one or two scenes are close to brilliant, a few are rousing in the best summer movie tradition, many are go-nowhere compromises - that ultimately negates its reason for being with a pointless, all-smiles denouement. Forget those tantalizing rumors about story elements involving statutory rape and superhuman ejaculation; all of Hancock's sharp edges have been sanded down for four-quadrant consumption. As for who did the sanding, that's a far more interesting question than anything raised by the film (actually, I'm not sure this cut of the film raises any questions other than "Why bother?"). The lingering, R-rated rowdiness - e.g. Hancock hurling f-bombs at innocent bystanders, the head-up-the-ass gag, the resolution of the hostage crisis in the bank - is all pretty clearly the influence of director Peter Berg, who's been cultivating a churlish, guy's guy aesthetic since his dark comedy debut, VERY BAD THINGS. Unfortunately, Berg is not his mentor, Michael Mann (who cameos as a corporate executive in HANCOCK) - and even if he was in the final cut club, he'd still have an exceptionally hard time convincing the studio that it's in their best interest to slap a restrictive rating on their $150 million-plus, Will Smith-starring 4th of July cash cow. The film, by the way, gets off to an excruciatingly rough start. While I suppose it's possible that Berg's responsible for inserting the clean version of Ludacris's "Move Bitch" into the film's opening action sequence (the one from the trailer where Hancock tears up the 105 Freeway trying to apprehend some heavily-armed gang bangers), this feels like a relieved studio sanitizing whatever they can, as early as they can, to keep concerned parents from yanking their kids out of the theater within the first ten minutes. Regardless of who's to blame, it's just a lame and timid and utterly needless capitulation to the MPAA - the only thing worse than getting assaulted with that song six years after it hit "overplayed" status is getting subjected to the radio-friendly edit at the outset of a movie that's trying to set a raucously profane tone. It doesn't help that the car-flipping action set piece it plays us into is essentially a carbon copy of the impressive highway ambush from Berg's THE KINGDOM. But if Berg's on autopilot, Will is, as ever, on, trash-talking the bad guys as has been his jocular wont since BAD BOYS and INDEPENDENCE DAY. And if you're still wondering why this guy's the biggest movie star in the world, there's your answer: he respects his audience too much to ever phone it in. He is emphatically, 100% committed to entertaining each and every ticket-buyer from start to finish; he's more like James Brown or Prince in this regard than, say, Tom Cruise. I do, however, get the sense that Will is emulating Cruise (who largely followed the lead of Paul Newman), which is smart insofar as career longevity is concerned (just keep your damn feet off Oprah's couch, Will). That said, he's beginning to encounter the same difficulties Cruise faced in the early-to-mid '90s, when the hotshot act from TOP GUN uneasily gave way to the "Master Thespian" growing pains of INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE. I already think Will's a more versatile actor than Cruise (based on ALI alone), but he's definitely struggling with an inclination to push his audience outside of their comfort zone. A great night out at the movies isn't enough anymore; he wants his $200 million-grossing entertainments to be about something. This is all very admirable, but it ain't working out just yet. The original, darker ending of I AM LEGEND had to be dumped in favor of a more comforting conclusion; meanwhile, HANCOCK, the script about a foul-mouthed superhero who behaves monstrously because he can, is now a reassuring fable about a godlike creature who learns to love the ungrateful little shits he's been placed on Earth to protect. Is he a wantonly destructive flipside to the Superman archetype or a metaphor for American might run amok? With a little more focus, and (most likely) a lot less input from producers and execs, it's possible he could've been one of these things lucidly rather than neither of them incoherently. Interestingly, the film's most fleshed-out character is Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), an idealistic publicist (again, it's fantasy) who offers his image rehabilitation skills to Hancock after the inebriated antihero saves his life from an onrushing train (thus setting off a disastrous, chain-reaction wreck in the process). Though we still don't know how long the world's been living with this self-destructive iteration of Hancock, Ray still thinks it's absurd for a do-gooder to draw such extreme derision, so he convinces Hancock to surrender to the authorities and pay his debt to society for a few months (a purely voluntary gesture since no manmade prison could possibly hold the guy). He's hesitant at first, but Hancock finally agrees because he likes Ray's kid and is bewitched by his smokin' hot wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), with whom he must have history since they keep exchanging meaningful glances whenever Ray's not looking. Since the film is absent a supervillain or much in the way of conflict, this unspoken whatever is the sole story element that keeps us engaged up until the end of the second act. In other words, the film would be an interminable bore - even at ninety minutes - without the chemistry of its three leads, who invest the schizophrenic material with much more integrity than it deserves. One problem with Theron's delayed reveal is that you know a Best Actress Oscar winner isn't getting relegated to housewife status in a film like this; perhaps if Will had been allowed to play more of a cad, their sexual tension might've had a whiff of danger to it. As it stands in this cut of the picture, it's just an insultingly telegraphed setup. For a while, it looks like Hancock is going to be both hero and villain in this story (i.e. once he realizes he does have a past with Mary, he's unwilling to fly away gracefully), but the narrative quickly gets conventional and shoehorns in a gang of escaped convicts who want to even the score with Hancock. This is where a wise man gives up on Berg's film and hopes that the forthcoming director's cut (headed your way for the holidays) makes a little more sense. In the meantime, if Will is serious about this art shit, he really ought to team up with Michael Mann again, 'cuz Little Mann just got steamrolled by Sony. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks