Superhero Agonistes

Independent Weekly, The; Durham, N.C. › August 27, 2009

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Summary

I think it's important to note that startling shut, because it's central to what's so distinctive and exciting about [Hancock], but I also won't spoil the viewer's pleasure by revealing the surprises its last half-hour holds. Suffice it to say that, while its execution is demonstrably more ragged than that of Iron Man, [Peter Berg]'s film ventures into more bracing thematic territory, and ended up striking me as the more fascinating of the two films.

It starts out, felicitously, with the Superhero as Bum. Played by a grizzled, blocky,'parch-lipped [Will Smith], die movie's tide character sleeps on park benches, dresses in castoffs and guzzles bottles of bourbon with a true alkie's avidity. But... he has super powers. When a trio of baddies with big guns lead an LAPD squadron on a deadly rampage down one of the city's freeways, Hancock rouses himself in time to rocket into the air, plunge into the miscreants' SUV, swat away their bullets and stop the crime in mid-spree.

The Superhero LA. Loves to Hate obviously needs an image assist, and that arrives courtesy of an idealistic PR man named Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman). Rescued by Hancock in yet another act of mayhem-inducing civic intervention, Ray takes the gnarly superhero home to dinner, where the presences of Ray's wife Mary (Charlize Theron) and son Aaron (Jae Head) start to puncture Hancock's antisocial emotional armor. Soon enough, he's listening seriously to Ray's proposal for a media makeover.

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Extract

Superhero Agonistes

Will Smith's burned-out savior in Hancock; Roman de Gare, the cinematic love child of Umberto Eco and Jacqueline Susann

HANCOCK

Opens Wednesday throughout the Triangle

ROMAN DE CARE

Opens Wednesday in select theaters

Summer, as we know, is lousy with superheroes. Turn the comer in any multiplex between Memorial Day and Labor Day and you're liable to be trampled by some dude in titanium tights hurling F/X thunderbolts in a desperate, last-ditch effort to save a dying plane...

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