‘Hancock’ hands us twist on superhero formula

Soren Andersen, for the Northwest Guardian

By I have a rule. After many years of doing this job, I’ve learned that as a general rule the sooner an action movie serves up A) a car chase or B) a helicopter flyover the likelier it is to dump.

There’s no surer sign that the people who made it have no fresh ideas. So they try to disguise that fact with the screech of tires, the chatter of bullets and the thump of rotor blades.

“Hancock” opens with a freeway car chase in which the bullets fly fast and furious. And overhead, surveying the scene, is a helicopter.

Uh oh.

Heart, feel free to sink.

But, surprise. The picture doesn’t stink. Not quite, at any rate.

There is a functioning intelligence operating behind all the Sturm und Drang, and one moderately fresh idea kicking around in its action-addled head.

Also, it has Will Smith.

People love Will Smith. And if they can love him as a dog-throttling, self-sacrificingly suicidal hero in “I Am Legend,” they’ll probably love him in “Hancock.”

Lord knows, though, his character is hard to love. And that’s the point of the picture.

In a summer season glutted with superheroes, with Iron Man and the Hulk already out there and Batman and Hellboy crouching in the wings, Hancock is a superhero like no other. His whiskey breath tells you that. His bum-grade stubble tells you that. His raggedy clothes tell you that.

Tell you what, let’s leave this loser to snooze in his drunken stupor on his L.A. bus bench with many empties strewn at his feet. Don’t wake him up. If he could focus, he could hurt you.

Somebody does, of course. A kid, who calls him a … well, a not very nice name that we can’t print here. Wakes him up, tells him there’s an army of cops chasing some gun-crazy crooks, and then tells him to get with the superhero program and save the day.

Much spectacular special-effects destruction follows. And much of it looks surprisingly cheesy. We’ve seen these kinds of metal-crumpling, masonry-busting scenes done before, and done better than what’s on view in “Hancock.”

His destruction is so extreme that Angelenos, rather than praising and thanking him, boo and denounce him. Where’s the love, people? Where’s the love?

And that’s the concept that sets “Hancock” outside the superhero mainstream: He’s despised.

Despised because he’s a drunk. And a grouch. And, uh, that name that kid called him.

Who can save him? Who can fix him? Who can find a way to make us care about him?

Jason Bateman, that’s who. Bateman’s been cast as Ray, a nice-guy PR person (he prefers the term “image consultant”) who is saved from a squashy stuck-on-a-crossing death-by-locomotive by Hancock. Out of gratitude, Ray takes Mr. Grouchy on as a client. He takes him home to meet the family, cute-as-a-button freckled-faced son Aaron (Jae Head) and va-voomy wife Mary (Charlize Theron). The kid shows Hancock uncritical kindness, which starts to thaw the grump out. The wife shows signs that there’s some mysterious something or other going on between the two.

So what we’ve got is a superhero as a reclamation project. Eventually we get a superhero in rehab.

And throughout we have a superhero with a secret. What’s Hancock’s story? How did he get to be such a pill? And what’s up with him and Mary, huh?

Director Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights,” “The Kingdom”) has trouble establishing a consistent tone in the picture. The action scenes are choppy, and the more intimate moments are unconvincing. Berg means to mine a measure of humor from the relationship between Ray and Hancock, but Smith’s surliness is so unmodulated it kills the laughs. And Berg overuses tight close-ups of his actors’ faces, which, combined with antsy editing, are so in-your-face they feel oppressive.

Psychodrama and big-bang moments coexist uneasily in “Hancock.” Smith’s hit-making Midas’ touch will surely be tested with this one.

Hancock

Director: Peter Berg

Cast: Will Smith, Jason Bateman, Jae Head and Charlize Theron

Running Time: 1:32

Rating: PG-13; language, violence, intense action