So there I sat in the theater, blinking in bewildered disbelief, watching this movie called Hancock skitter by on the screen, unable to make sense out of what could have possibly happened to cause a movie that at some point (I think) had an interesting premise fail so spectacularly. Ignoring the fact that there is a train wreck in the movie, I can’t help but use that descriptive for this utter mess of a movie. I scarcely know where to begin in describing it.

Writing: How could anything bearing the name of Vince Gilligan (The X-Files, etc) as one of the writers be as abysmally bad as this? Could an original draft of this script have actually worked? If so, what the heck happened? This feels like a movie that went through dozens upon dozens of rewrites, by countless scribes. Only two are credited, but who knows. Perhaps the studio got way too involved. Now I’m all for movies that work in many genres. I hate it when things have to fit neatly into one particular genre. But this movie has zero idea what it is trying to be. Absolutely no idea. It’s all over the map. The character could just as easily be bipolar and I’d be unable to tell the difference. Then they start throwing random pieces of mythology at the story to see what sticks. Is this a super-hero movie? Is it an anti-superhero movie? Is it a character drama? Is is satire? Is it a parody? The plot twists are not only undermining to the movie, but they make an already confusing narrative and scatter it to the wind.

Production: And if the story wasn’t already a complete and utter mess, the production is even worse. For every good visual effects shot there are 25 absolutely terrible ones. How in the world is a big budget, major studio movie kicked out with visual effects this mind-blowingly awful? Seriously, this movie has worse visual effects than any major studio movie I have seen in years. Then there’s the incompetent camera work. I’m not a fan of movies that rely on hand held camera work in nearly every shot. Very few have pulled it off well. Even Battlestar Galactica, which has mastered the technique as well as I ever expect anyone to master, still has some weak moments. But this movie’s camera work is constantly distracting. This isn’t quite as bad as the second Bourne movie (which still managed to work despite the worst hand held camera work in the history of film), but it’s up there with some of the worst offenders. I suppose I can say that the sound design seemed well done. At least I wasn’t actively noticing how bad it was, like I was for most of the other production aspects. Oh, and I suppose the practical effects teams did a pretty good job as well.

Cast: Oh, you poor, unfortunate actors. To be fair, Charlize Theron (one of my favorite actresses) is trying her best. I felt so very sorry for her. There’s some definite effort on her part to make this thing work. And Will Smith also seems to be trying against the odds to make it work. The always fun Jason Bateman does manage to squeak just a bit of entertainment into his role, despite the fact that he’s written as quite the flake of a character. Between the three of them, it’s amazing they couldn’t pull this movie out of the fire and make it at least mildly entertaining. But despite their efforts, I sat there slack-jawed, watching this train wreck run father and farther off the rails. Frankly, it makes the movie even more annoying to me to see a cast like this who are trying so very hard and given so very little to make things work.

Music: I was really looking forward to a new John Powell super-hero score. Sadly, this score pales in comparison to his spectacular X3 score. While it’s amiable enough with some moderately interesting action cues and the occasionally nice, warm character motifs, it just can’t escape the incredibly confused movie it’s in. Sure, there are plenty of examples of composers turning in fantastic work for terrible movies (Jerry Goldsmith has many such scores), but more times than not, a terrible film will trap the score. This is just such an example. Still, Powell’s score is probably the high point of the film, by process of elimination.

Ultimately, the blame falls to director Peter Berg. If there’s one primary job of a director, it is to maintain the tone of a movie. And at that job, Berg failed. Boy did he fail. Which is sad, because I thought his previous directing gig, The Kingdom, was very good. What really blows my mind is that the critics are being at all kind to this movie. Granted, most aren’t particularly praising it, but they aren’t laying into it very hard, either. What was the highlight of seeing this movie? Seeing the first theatrical trailer for Quantum Of Solace.