Steven Reynolds

A drunken-slob superhero with an attitude bordering on nihilist, John Hancock (Will Smith) is despised by the people of Los Angeles. His spectacularly destructive efforts to fight crime usually end up costing the city millions. So when Hancock saves budding PR executive Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) from certain death at a level crossing, Embrey offers to repay Hancock by helping reinvent his image. Embrey's young son is thrilled to have a superhero hanging around, but Ray's wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), seems to be wrestling with both attraction and alarm... "Hancock" is outrageous, funny, smart, knowingly ridiculous and surprisingly moving. Yes, moving. I was expecting "Bad Boys + super powers", or at most a spoof on the clichés of the rapidly tiring superhero genre. What we get is something else entirely. The surprising tonal shift of the second half is neither as grating nor as abrupt as preview audiences had us believing. For me, it really worked. So much so that this is one of the few blockbusters I wish had been longer, giving writers Gilligan and Ngo and director Berg more time to explore the backstory and the resonant depths it potentially had. The problem isn't so much that the tone changes, but rather that more isn't made of it. I also wanted to spend more time with these thoroughly likable characters. As it stands, "Hancock" is still a winner. The script is sharp, the direction kinetic, the music and lens work appropriately manic, and the performances fine. Most surprising is Smith who manages to keep his shirt on and wring a lot more than laughs out of Hancock. While Smith can stoke a box-office inferno with his name alone, he shows once again that he's also a pretty good actor. He can certainly do vulnerable, even in superhero mode.

Look up "lost opportunity" in the dictionary and you'll see the one-sheet for this film. It lacks every quality for which the originals were so loved: plot, energy, pace, imagination, suspense, smart dialogue, surprising humour and spine-tingling moments of religious wonder. Such a heady mixture regularly had you grinning from ear to ear. This time around you'll be sitting there in slack-jawed wonderment at the lameness of it all. What the hell happened? A dire screenplay, for one thing, which seems cobbled together from several variants. Rather than setting up a simple goal (get the ark, get the stone, get the grail) as the driver for an array of action set-pieces, it seems content just to wander around aimlessly plundering the originals for references. Don't blame David Koepp. He's a reasonable writer, but here seems to have been hired as a typist. No, this cack-handed travesty has the stink of George Lucas all over it - the man who, let's face it, spent the last decade boring us senseless with the storyless downfall of that irritating sap, Anakin Skywalker. Where's Howard Hawks-devotee Lawrence Kasdan when you need him? What happened to the version Frank Darabont wrote? Surely it wasn't worse than this. Performances are fine, but they can't salvage it. Ford is grizzled but convincing because his age is acknowledged. Shia LaBeouf adds some cheek and youthful spark. Karen Allen's sass is tempered with girlish affection and the few snatches of dialogue Marion shares with Indy are among the film's best. Cate Blanchett brings her stagecraft to a ludicrous caricature, but not even she can save the day. The screenplay forbids it. Overall, this is a tremendously disappointing film. Sure, expectations were high. But that's not unreasonable. When one of the world's best filmmakers revives one of the world's most loved series you expect he'll make an effort. None is in evidence here. This is the laziest film Spielberg has ever made.