Hancock 2008

Hancock is a weird film. The film seems to have an identity crisis. The first half of the film enjoys being a postmodern parody of the superhero genre, while the second half takes itself deathly serious. I really enjoy the first half with how it re-contextualizes the superhero as celebrities and jerks like what comics from Image Comics in the nineties did such as Youngblood ( a lousy comic) as well as more recent comics like The Authority (fantastic) and Kick-Ass (your milage will vary) as at the time there really was not a film like that. The second half however, I did not enjoy. There is such a tonal whiplash that it is like you are watching an entirely different film. Instead of subverting superhero tropes it instead falls into them thus losing the cleverness the first half had. There are so many superhero films that play it straight far better than Hancock, so it would have been nice to have something different. The climax of the film is also pretty violent compared to most other superhero films. Handcock gets the s-word beat out of him. It is quite gruesome. Handcock is played by Will Smith who pretty much acts like all the action heroes Will Smith plays. Granted, there is something likable about the way he plays those characters. I just do not understand this film. It could have been much more if it just tried. I give Hancock a five out of ten just for the first half.