Hancock

Watched the movie Hancock this evening. Pretty good movie. Will Smith did a great job. Charlize Theron was a stunning surprise. Lots of action. Lots of violence.
A superhero with a bad attitude. Hancock is super strong and invulnerable. He is mean and uncaring to people. He gets drunk and crashes into things when he flies. People hate him.
He saves the life of a PR executive, who helps Hancock “turn over an new leaf”.
Dealing with an issue I have thought about regarding other action/super hero genre films. What about collateral damage? When Hancock stops a train from running over a car, he causes the train to derail. People get hurt because he is careless.
Other movies totally ignore this. When Mel Gibson was running through the street shooting an assault rifle at the bad guy in Lethal Weapon, what happened to the bullets that missed the bad guy? Ben Grimm in The Fantastic Four threw a car at Dr Doom who then gets slammed into a city bus. What happened to the people on the bus? Of course these are movies, not real life. Getting that kind of detail would spoil the ride of a great action scene. But it is entertaining to see a super hero who had to confront this problem.
The special effects were amazing as we should expect these days.
Some of the scenes were so full of explosions, debris flying and stuff happening that it was hard to comprehend.
One thing I was bothered with was the level of violence and adult language. If you watch the TV ads, the movie is being marketed in such a way that appeals to younger audiences. There is a young boy in the ad who calls Hancock a “jerk”. In the movie he uses the “A-word”. I myself am an adult. I can handle hearing the word. I don’t have children. If I did this would disturb me. This is clearly deceptive advertizing.
Last month I watched Iron Man when it first came out. Saturday morning. I watch a guy bring his young son in to the theater. They sit down in front and to the right of my seat. The boy must have been about 5yrs old. The man has a drink and a big tub of popcorn. They are really excited that they are going to watch Iron Man. Then the trailers start rolling. Scene after scene of graphic horror, violence and intense noise. Pretty scary stuff, even for me. The kid starts crying, “Daddy, I want to go home.” The father is unable to calm him down. The poor guy has no choice but to leave the theater without seeing the movie. With the cost of tickets and snacks, he must have spent $15.00. But it was spoiled because the placement of inappropriate movie trailers in front of the wrong audience. By the way, Iron Man was nowhere as violent or scary as the previews of the other movies.

Charlize Theron was amazing. I will not say anything except that I was surprised.

Overall, I did enjoy the movie. I doubt that I would go see it again.
Iron Man on the other hand was a movie I watched twice. And when the DVD comes out, I will buy it. When I grow up, I want to be Tony Stark.
I don’t want to be Hancock.