Academy Award® nominee Will Smith (Best Actor, The Pursuit of Happyness, 2006) stars in this action-packed comedy as Hancock, a sarcastic, hard-living and misunderstood superhero who has fallen out of favor with the public. When Hancock grudgingly agrees to an extreme makeover from idealistic publicist Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman, Juno), his life and reputation rise from the ashes and all seems right again--until he meets a woman (2003 Academy Award® winner Charlize Theron, Best Actress, Monster) with similar powers to his and the key to his secret past.
James Lassiter
Vy Vincent Ngo
Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman, Eddie Marsan, Johnny Galecki, Thomas Lennon
2008 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. and GH Three LLC. All Rights Reserved
Critics Consensus: Though it begins with promise, Hancock suffers from a flimsy narrative and poor execution.
Adam Markovitz
Dave Calhoun
Ben Kenigsberg
The strain of messianism in Will Smith movies is becoming ever more pronounced.
Train wrecks are intrinsically spectacular, and Will Smith's new movie offers a doozy. Two of them...
Namrata Joshi
Some melodrama and a superwoman later, it loses steam.
Eileen Jones
Shots suddenly angled from the upper-right-hand-corner kitchen cupboard for no discernible reason....
Kaleem Aftab
Bateman, whose name is usually mud when it comes to appearing in good movies, brings out the best...
Bold Life (Hendersonville, NC)
Marcianne Miller
[At first] Hancock is great fun, quirky and hilarious... Smith especially proves every minute why...
Has action, heart, but superhero is an alcoholic.
Parents need to know that although kids will definitely be interested in seeing this Will Smith superhero movie (thanks to both his presence and a massive marketing campaign), a definite tragic streak runs through it. That, along with the movie's other themes -- mortality, the meaning of love -- may prove too mature for young kids and tweens. There's also plenty of swearing (including an "F" word) and a fair amount of action/fantasy violence, including gunfire, cut-off hands, and Hancock himself yelling at kids and destroying buildings. That said, the movie also has a lot of heart (plus some good Will Smith comic moments) and isn't just your average popcorn flick. An unrated version of this DVD is available and contains a sex scene and some other material that do not appear in the original.
Genre:Action, Drama
Release Date:July 2, 2008