This is the much needed SPOILER WARNING. This review contains SPOILERS.

Hancock is Will Smith’s latest venture into darker more mature material. Directed by Peter Berg, Hancock tells the story of a reluctant hero, Smith, who is a bitter alcoholic with anger management issues. Because of his isolation and the public outcry against his “super hero” antics, which causes more damage than actual “saving”, Hancock never connects with anyone or feels that he belongs in this world.

He’s lost in this large impersonal city of Los Angeles; a reluctant superhero, not because he wants to be, because he has powers of one. His life changes as he saves a PR guy, Ray, played by Jason Bateman. With his infectious idealism and honest heart, he transforms Hancock into the true superhero that he always had potential to become.

Overall, Berg crafts a great tale on how Hancock fights his demons and comes to be the Hero. It is a dark satire on the whole superhero genre, poking fun at certain aspects left and right. Smith does a great job in portraying the asshole superhero that he needed to be to show the arc that Hancock went through in the film.

Hancock is exactly the type of superhero movie that I love. He’s not battling an arch-villain or an exterior force that threatens humanity. No. Hancock is battling himself. He’s fighting an interior battle; his personal demons. When you have an immortal superhero, no exterior force can defeat him, so why even bother. Only he can defeat himself and when we first meet Hancock on a bus bench, sleeping off a hangover, he’s already at the bottom, broken and defeated.

Berg handles the transformation that Hancock goes through perfectly. It was actually pretty good up to the last third of the film when Charlize Theron’s character, Mary Embry, throws Hancock out of the kitchen walls and into the streets. Those of us who can put two and two together and see the glimpses of another super hero from the trailers should have seen that coming a mile away. With that knowledge, I was expecting Berg to take the film to the next level, but unfortunately he dropped the ball.

Actually, it wasn’t him that dropped the ball. It was the script. It just fell apart. There’s no excuse for it, and with where they are going to take it, there’s no way around it. The tone suddenly changes from the light tone of poking fun at the super hero genre to a serious melodrama.

Some might be expecting the revelation of another super human will give Hancock a super-villain to fight, but it doesn’t. It just ends up being a melodramatic couples fight with shoddy exposition; the exposition of Hancock’s origin. Instead of leaving Hancock’s past and origin with a simple “I don’t know” it goes the route of explaining who Mary and Hancock are and it’s utterly ridiculous.

These two super humans are immortals left on earth by the Gods, the Olympians, which once looked over earth. It just happened that they are the only two left in the world. Their history together, as a loving couple, dates back literally to forever ago. They are a pair, created to be with each other throughout time.

They only separated out of love for each other, because of the mandatory kryptonite factor. Once these two super humans are together, they become mortal and eventually they’ll die together. Out of love. Love makes us mortal. Without it, we are only self-righteous Gods.

Tragic, these two lifelong lovers are torn apart so they can survive.

Luckily for Hancock, he has no memory of ever being with Mary, so it is easier for them to part. It’s not the life ending be all end all that great loves should be, because they aren’t in love at all. They are just two super humans that exist. Their history thrown away like the last third of the film.

Maybe I’ve gone in watching the film with low expectations because of the bad word-of-mouth spreading like a wild SoCal fire, but I came out enjoying it for the most part. It was damn near great when it was the joking, mocking, self discovery of a reluctant hero growing up, fighting his demons and becoming the super hero that he was meant to be. But ultimately, all greatness comes to an end, and it involves a woman.