..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

Hancock
Directed by Peter Berg

Will Smith is arguably the biggest movie star in the world (it's not strictly quantifiable and nothing lasts forever). In industry circles he's a superhero whose powers range from raising smiles to generating money. He cannot to the best of anyone's knowledge run faster than a speeding bullet, leap tall buildings or see through clothing. Nonetheless he has considerable powers that trump the aforementioned parlor tricks; particularly among power brokers who make the decisions about what gets played in the local multiplex.

If Smith cannot practice medicine or law he can always play a doctor or lawyer on screen if he chooses. He can be the U.S. President for as long as it takes to make a movie and forever after on DVD and cable rotation. And he can be a superhero.

Hancock - the movie and character - is atypical of the comic book idols that have become popular at the cinema. He's surly, ill kempt, prone to inflict considerable collateral damage in some vague pursuit of justice and often drinks to excess. He has issues … lots of them.

Objectively, the idea of a superhero with feet of clay is better than intriguing. In the lingo of the biz it's a great high concept. But between premise and execution this is a movie whose artistic license has been badly bruised by exposure to Kryptonite. It's a tale propelled largely by charm with a hint of substance its creators are unable or unwilling to pursue to the motherlode.

The film opens with Hancock (Smith) merely a fact of life on the urban landscape of Los Angeles. The absence of ruminations on his origin or development is at least briefly a welcome respite. Later he will claim to have lost all memory prior to awaking in a hospital 80 years earlier (superheroes do not age) but the filmmakers take the Gestaltian stance that only the here and now matter.

With a rumpled homeboy appearance and seething belligerence he dispatches criminals with the petulance of a school boy. He's a malevolent Peter Pan lacking finesse. He's never mastered the soft landing and his cavalier attitude about the havoc created to property in pursuit of the bad guys has put him at odds with local authorities and made the local citizenry disdainful of his presence.

The happenstance that pushes the tale forward occurs when Hancock rescues Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) - an improbably virtuous public relations man - from certain death when his car gets jammed on the tracks of an on coming train. In the process Hancock wrecks the locomotive and its cargo and countless other vehicles raising the wrath of the crowd. But Ray is the exception. He recognizes that his life has been saved and invites his savior home for a spaghetti dinner.

This Androcles and the Lion moment vaults the title character into the realm of domestic suburban bliss. The Embrey brood includes Aaron (Jae Head), his pre-teen son, and conciliatory and protective wife Mary (Charlize Theron). But mere thanks aren't sufficient; Ray wants to rehabilitate the superhero's image and despite feigned indifference, Hancock is not impervious to a little love.

One can immediately appreciate the rich potential for humor and social satire and the script by Vy Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan establishes the solid bedrock to build upon. Ray grooms and repackages his client; giving him pointers on civility and providing him with a costume more befitting his station. Then, in a bold move, he gets him to surrender to the courts for outstanding civil damage suits. He's banking that absence (in jail) will make the beating heart of L.A. grow fonder as criminal activity escalates.

The call from the police will eventually come and the new, improved and painfully polite Hancock indeed goes from zero to hero in the public conscious.

The problem with the script (and the film) is that it has a bad case of ADD dramatics. Rather than plumb the situation it jettisons it in favor of a less palpable scenario that sets out to fill in Hancock's back story. An earlier glance had already tipped the audience of a relationship between him and Mary and that simmering attraction eventually provides the pictures big reveal: She too is possessed of super powers and has spent decades in silence as an ordinary sort because of the psychological toll those attributes have inflicted.

The film is a good idea gone wrong; spinning wildly out of control with director Peter Berg incapable of being little more than adroit in setting its course. That it is palatable at all can be largely credited to its leading performers who provide conviction and nuance to characters straddling some grey zone between temporal reality and cosmic fantasy.

The intrinsic strength of the material rests with bringing the essential fantasy to earth and situating Hancock in the tsoris of everyday life. But the script tastes rather than savors the irony and as if filled with painful self doubt falls back on the very conventions it so fleetingly and effectively skewered. In striving to have it both ways it remains a promised unfulfilled. One of the cardinal rules of superherodom is that with great attributes comes great responsibility and that is a lesson its makers ignored at great peril.

- Leonard Klady