Hancock

Interesting conundrum. How to discuss my main objection to a film without giving away important elements? How about filthy great spoiler tags? That seems awfully clumsy. Don't worry, it won't ruin the film either way.

There's a twist. Realistically you can probably guess it before the projectors warm, but they are rather relying on you not to. I didn't, personally, because I was watching it under the assumption that they wouldn't make such a clumsy, half hearted, fractured film. But it seems they did.

The first half of the film rolled along in much the way I was hoping it might. His powers both alienate him and free him from social constraints. He has a basic but flawed moral structure, both elements derived from his powers. The compulsion to use them driven by the torturous loneliness that they create, yet the absence of a code of conduct because of it. Without the charisma the Fresh Prince brings to the role, it would almost be a tragedy. The PR guy, hopelessly virtuous to the point of flaw becomes his guide, his external conscience, the piece of the puzzle he had been missing. It's brilliant, really. His origins as he explains them are great and fitting. Left with no knowledge of the who or the what, he must decide what and who to be. Hancock has to choose to be a hero, the powers alone are not the definition.

And then the film fucks it up.

So it's spoiler time: There's another one. Another being like him. The explanation is clumsy at best, but the change in direction is catastrophic.

It provides two things: Something for him to punch. Remember the hulk-dogs in the Eric Bana Hulk movie? Yeah. That didn't work either (though this is considerably better looking). Because super heroes aren't super unless there is a fight scene or two. Presumably it would leave the audience confused. But worse, much worse, is that ceases to be a film about Hancock's moral development.

He's told that he was always a hero, that he'd been created as one, that it was his destiny. So what in heavens name was the first half of the film about? The powers are the definition now? So what was the point of the movie? His arc and character development are limited to recovering from a bump on the head?

He doesn't get to explore who he would have become once provided the morality that completed him. He becomes a hero by default rather than determination. In the first half the nature of his powers isn't relevant, they exist and he has to deal with them. In the second, dealing with them isn't relevant because his nature is predetermined.

Either of these would be reasonable in isolation (the first more compelling, the second more palatable), but a combination of the two is calamity. They're mutually exclusive and nailing them together creates a Frankenstein monster style golem of a movie, lurching from one scene to the next wondering who's brain it has.

Growl.