The summer of 2008 broke history, and rebuilt it.
America suffered through a bitter presidential election on the road to a globewrecking financial crisis.
In theaters, cinematic generations were rising and falling.
Credit: Frank Masi/Columbia Pictures
This week: Will Smith is the god of Los Angeles.
On July 2 of the following year,Men in Blackarrived.
That film wasHancock, 10 years old Monday.
It is a strange film, a pileup of incongruous storylines and performances pointing everywhere except each other.
This sounds like a riotous comedy, but the mood is frequently downbeat.
Smith himself is in a bummer phase, frowning, suspicious.
He mostly looks sad.
His face here is his face the whole movie:
Hancock is a celebrity presence in Los Angeles.
Everyone knows his nameand despises him.
He stops a car chase, but only after destroying a bunch of police cars.
He’s a drunk, and for a few minutes he seems to be fully homeless.
He decides to start with Hancock, setting the loathed hero on the path to public redemption.
So here is a movie where Will Smith learns to be popularlearns to becharming.
But the general sourness ofHancock’s humor fails most attempts at comedy.
Director Peter Berg seems more interested in the action setpieces, including a bank heist in downtown Los Angeles.
The shaky-cam is awful, though, a faded vogue for “realism” taken to its silliest extreme.
In a memorable dinnertime exchange, the camera moves closely onto the back of heads.
Hancock is, when we meet him, already famous.
Kids walk up to him on the street call him an “ahole.”
And Nancy Grace calls him out on national television.
The First Half ofHancockas a Lohan Allegory: Discuss.
But Smith’s castingisthe movie, of course.
And his somber performance points to a deepening weirdness at the core of this story.
Hancock is a fantastically talented black man who mainstream society deploreseven as it covers him attentively.
(Every TV in this Los Angeles playing some new Hancock news item.)
Ray’s big idea is to, like, sanitize Hancock.
(His big suggestion is to always tell the police that they’re doing a good job.)
So it’s an affront that the film constantly seems to be about everyoneexceptHancock.
Bateman’s the chattering presence of the film’s first half, the driving force toward “goodness.”
Then comes the late-act-2 revelation that breaks the movie into pieces.
Recessive in the film’s first half, Theron suddenly dominates the movie.
It’s’s a weird arc for our Hancock.
You feel the pileup of a long development here.
Smith himself was a producer on this film, and there’s a push-pull between self-deprecation and wild vanity.
Smith took a bummer role as a sadsack protagonist, the quieter half of a buddy combo opposite Bateman.
They were onto something, though.
It’s striking to rewatch it today, noticing how many movies recently have been conjuring its essence.
SoHancockis the strangest kind of film, a chaotic mess pointing the way toward a new world order.
