|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The daredevil feats of
rescuing humans in a crisis bring little excitement to the juvenile
plot,
Will Smith who plays Hancock is one of the big names in Hollywood and is capable of holding a film together but even he is asked to do too much in the given conditions. His introduction "I’m Hancock, I drink and all that stuff" may be different from that famous line "Bond, James Bond" but it surely isn’t an improvement, just different for the sake of being different. For the modern superwoman, we have the beautiful Charlize Theron who, if I remember right, made her first impression in The General’s Daughter over a decade ago. There is a chemistry of sorts when she’s not taking her son to the soccer games and her special dish is meatballs. But all this hardly helps in establishing a character. Narration-wise Hollywood is probably scraping the bottom of the barrel. The third character is Jason Bateman, a public relations guy who wants Hancock to improve his image, after all PR is big in today’s world even as the United States is getting ready for a black President in Barack Obama, so why not a black superhero. The idea is good but the story doesn’t do justice to it. Incidentally, Irving Wallace sold the idea way back in the 1960s with The Man but four decades later the dream has yet to materialise. Martin Luther King Jr too had a dream but that’s another story. Director Peter Berg is probably asked to concentrate on action and with talented players like Will Smith and Charlize Theron, he may seem to have an advantage. But the plot is juvenile, if not asinine, and all Hancock’s daredevil feats of rescuing humans in a crisis or whales in troubled waters, it doesn’t do much more than the proverbial batting of an eyelid. So, between this, that and the other you still have to put in a superhuman effort to stifle a yawn. About 40 winks, that is looked after by the overpowering sound track. Hancock, therefore, is just predictable stuff with little excitement and even less expectation and the end comes like a relief. Oh yes, we can certainly do without such wafer-thin papers heroes, and that’s putting things mildly.
|
||
|
|
||
FOR
Hollywood, it looks like the season for super heroes. After Iron
Man, Indiana Jones (of course, old wine in new bottles) and
The Incredible Hulk, it’s Hancock, John Hancock to be
precise but colour apart, he’s no different from his predecessors.
For that you need a more original screenplay and some imagination, not
just action, action and more action.