THE MOVIE-                            3 stars out of 5

 

Hancock is a very frustrating film. It starts off with a tremendous premise and a stellar opening 60 minutes or so and then veers off course. The idea is great one, a modern day Superman with a very dark side. Not knowing who he is or how to relate to people, he takes to heavy drinking to hide his pain. He sleeps on park benches and in  two old trailers he stuck together. He seems to eat nothing but Jiffy Pop and drinks nothing but Jack Daniels. While he swoops in and saves the day, he does so recklessly, tearing up the streets, damaging buildings, cars, trains etc. to the point where the populace of Los Angeles is sick of him. Lawsuits are brought against him for personal injury and property losses and he fails to respond. Ignoring everyone. That is until he meets Ray Embrey who he saves from being run over by a freight train. He is thankful for Hancock’s help and sets out to try to improve his public image as he is a PR expert. He brings him home and introduces him to his wife and son. They decide that it would be best for Hancock to go to jail thinking that with him off the streets, the crime rate will go so high that the police and community will beg him for his help. Up to this point, the film was really engaging and a lot of fun. It is here though where the film veers off track. The edginess of the character that made the first half of the film so enjoyable is gone, replaced by a totally homogenized Hancock, one that is mundane and everything he didn’t want to be, from the tight leather suit to the sweet personality. It is though they really didn’t know how to end the film and took the easy way out, losing the premise of the entire opening of the film, the part that made it so interesting and so much fun. It would have been a much better film if they had figured out a way to keep the essence of that Hancock present through the entire film. The first half hour rates a 4 and the rest a 2, hence an average score of a 3 for an overall grade. Opportunities missed! Perhaps the sequel will get it right. There are two versions of the film presented here, the theatrical release and an unrated version. I preferred the unrated version which has a rather interesting sexual encounter between Hancock and a fan. Recommended but you may want to rent it first if your didn’t see it and enjoy it in the theater.

 

THE VIDEO-                            4 7/8 stars out of 5

 

Hancock is encoded with AVC and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2:40:1 and is another in a string of excellent looking encodes from Sony. This is a very stylized looking film with a color palette that is skewed to the golden end of the scale. Fleshtones have a golden hue throughout the film. In this regard, the supplements are really interesting as they were shot in high def during the actual filming of the movie. As such, they really show how the color palette was played with to get to overall look of the film. The hig def video shot for the extras show much more natural colors and black levels than the film itself. It really is an interesting comparison and one you should really check out. While the color palette is far from natural looking, it is quite pleasing to the eye and features bold and bright colors and black levels that are deep and stable. In fact, black levels are a bit too deep and the overall look of the film is a bit too dark for my tastes with details lost in the shadows. Clarity and detail are excellent however rendering an overall image of great depth. The fine textures of each actors’ skin, their clothing and backgrounds are all clearly visible. I did not detect any evidence of digital noise reduction or edge enhancement. As one would expect from a new film, the print used for this release was in excellent condition. Other than the color issue noted above which is not a fault of the encode but an artistic choice on the part of the director, the only issue I had with the encode was one scene which was very soft. The scene in question is set in a restaurant in the second half of the film and is noticeably softer than the rest of the film. It was shot in low light conditions but is noticeably softer than other segments of the film shot in similar lighting conditions. Other than this one brief scene, this is one excellent looking film and one that will no doubt thrill fans of the film.

 

THE AUDIO-                        4 1/2 stars out of 5

 

While I was thrilled with the video quality on this release, I was a bit disappointed with the audio as it was not as immersive as I had anticipated. This is clearly not the result of the Dolby True HD encode but of the sound design itself. The sound of the film is rather smooth and rich with good transparency and imaging but not quite up to reference levels. The overall sound did not have the depth that is the hallmark of a great sound design, sounding more flat in comparison to the best. The fidelity of the sound is otherwise quite good with the musical score, especially the blues music, sounding quite good. While the surround speakers were actively engaged, for some reason, they didn’t totally immerse my room in sound the way the best encodes do. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very good sound design. It falls just a tad short of the best however. For such a major release, I was expecting the best. In addition to the immersion issue noted above, I was also kind of surprised by the audio quality of the gunshots in the film, which sounded a bit light and not very convincing, lacking the heft that one hears in other films like Iron Man for example, robbing the film’s sound design of even more impact than one would have otherwise expected.

 

EXTRAS

 

Hancock is just loaded with high def extras. The disc is BD-Live enabled to allow you to download exclusive content from the internet provided you have a BD-Live enabled player. The extras also include 7 featurettes including Superhumans: The Making of Hancock, Home Life, Seeing the Future, Suiting Up, Building a Better Hero, Bumps and Bruises and Mere Mortals: Behind the Scenes with ‘Dirty Pete”. The release also includes a Blu-ray exclusive, an On Set Visual Diary BonusView Picture-In-Picture, including a longer version of the Picture-In-PIcture on the unrated version of the film. Also included is a digital copy of the film which can be played back on a PC, PSP or PS3. It does not appear to be compatible with a Mac.

 

IN CONCLUSION

 

As I noted at the beginning of this review, Hancock is a frustrating film as it had great potential that was not fully realized. This release does contain an excellent video presentation of the film with very good albeit not great audio. If you saw this film in the theaters and loved it, by all means grab a copy of this release as you will be very happy with this presentation on Blu-Ray. The rest of you may want to check it out on the basis of a rental before deciding whether to buy.