Hancock
Kim Madison

Hancock stars an amiable John Hancock, who Will Smith portrays well, is a super hero with real world vices such as drinking and laziness. A very likeable Public Relations Image Consultant Ray Embrey, portrayed by Jason Bateman, who gets saved by Hancock; and Mary Embrey, wife of Ray, is portrayed by Charlize Thieron.

Will Smith gives a valiant performance in this effort as the difficulty of casting a Super Hero who has to deal with normal problems and very real vices is a pretty challenging task considering that most of our normal heroes are selfless and self sacrificing. Hancock is most definitely not. He drinks and while he does try to help out when asked, he normally causes more damage than is worth.

In one attempt to put a stop to some gang members he destroys a freeway and a local monument. In another valiant effort he attempts to save a beached whale from dying by throwing it into the sea. While that might sound like a good thing but in doing so he actually capsizes a boat. Most of the time Hancock is doing things that have a lot of "Collateral Damage" you could say and the movie is spent most of the time having him deal with those types of circumstances.

Hancock is a super hero with all of the powers a super hero could ever want. He is relatively indestructible, has super hero strength, can fly through the air with ease and pretty much all of the stuff our normal super heroes can do. The difference with Hancock is that he is a relatively self serving Super Hero who rarely pays attention to what is going on around him and really only wants to do what is best for himself.

Despite his best efforts Hancock goes around town, mostly drunk, and does things to help people out because they ask him to, but he does them rather reluctantly and without any concern for what is going on around him. Essentially he is a public relations nightmare. Enter in Rey Embrey, portrayed by Jason Bateman.

Hancock saves Rey Embrey during one of his heroic feats. Rey decides that he wants to help Hancock's rather gruff image as a self-serving super hero as much of his recent actions have warranted cause for concern. He could easily be a real Super Hero in the eyes of the world but he really doesn't care. So Rey convinces Hancock to let him try to change his image from bad to good.

Much of the movie is spent trying to assist Hancock from changing into a real problem into a real good guy. Rey's efforts are to make sure he becomes that. Hancock gets put in compromising situations such as when he gets sent to jail for the damage he has caused while trying to be a hero. The rest of the movie puts Hancock in situations that would seem pretty odd for our normal every day vanilla super hero which is what makes it pretty interesting. A drunk super hero really does have an interesting concept to it.

Will Smith gives a good performance as this self-serving super hero. Despite him being an overall likeable guy, you can easily see him fit the casting. Jason Bateman has recently revived his career by playing these very types of roles, so he actually fits the bill as a pretty decent public relations image consultant.

Charlize Thieron, while not very much part of the first half of the movie, shows up in many of the second half sequences and does give a pretty good show as Rey's wife. Rey's wife really doesn't take a liking to Hancock so you can see where the plot twists can go here.

This movie was a well directed and well cast movie. If you are interested in a super hero with a drinking problem, or even a comedy with action sequences you will like this film. This film does have its own charms and was one of the top films in all of 2008. I would give this movie a thumbs up and would recommend that you see it.