Tuesday, December 30, 2008

A Beer, a Movie and a Blog v0.1 - "Hancock"

Whilest home on vacation (or on holiday as our friends across the pond who correctly have dubbed it "football" say) my parental units and I watched "Hancock" last night, beer free I might add.

This 2008 film staring Will Smith, the always hawt Charlize Theoron and the dude from "Arrested Development" (which I still need to watch) and "Juno" was not to bad in my book, or blog. Whatever.

Oh yes. Jason Bateman.

The trailer really showed the first about 15 minutes of the entire film - unlike "Spider-Man 3" which I still half-refuse to watch for that very fact - so seeing the film flesh out in more detail was pretty good. Though, on a side note, the whole drunk superhero who decided to go to jail so folks like him thing was pretty much summed up in the trailer too.

As I told a friend, it may not be the best superhero movie of all time -we all know "The Dark Knight" is* - but what I enjoyed was the premise of the film.

That being, as I said the trailer really explains halfway, a drunk superhero decides to try and clean up his act.

Insert SPOILER ALERT now.




Now, what was truly intriguing to me was the duality or polority or whatnot between Smith and Theron's characters, which I had blissfully remained in the dark about other than "it's more of a love story about them being in love." Luckily, whomever said that was really wrong about it, mostly.

The premise that these two go back millennia (that's thousands of years) end up being attracted to one another - hell they were married - as if they were magnets was interesting. The kicker being that they become mortal when to close to each other. Sort of a, "damned if you do, damned if you don't" deal and they are the only couple created as such to last it this long.

Mix that in with Hancock's amnesia 80 years ago because of a racial beating in Miami when people saw the mixed-couple together (and therefore, mortal) resulting in Mary (Theron) deciding to let him go about doing his thing and therefor the two not being mortal and such was cool.

She get's to fall in love with Michael Bluth (any points for that AD reference I Googled?) and he gets to be pissed off when people call him "asshole", drink whiskey and know he can't remember something.

Of course we get to see this mortality affect everyone at the climax of the movie, which you can see at your leisure.

Sure there are some Spider-Manesque themes in here (he's a menace etc.) but how they deal with this was cool, as were the Hancock smart-ass remarks to folks.

In all, I would say go rent the DVD for a few bucks wherever it is you go rent DVDs and enjoy 92 minutes - including the scene in the credits with Mike Epps (uncredited but listed as Criminal) calling Hancock "Handjob" - of a good movie.

"That is all."



*I am mostly certain but would not mind more research

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