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IN the summer of superheroes, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Batman in The Dark Knight, a supposed anti-hero, John Hancock, has secured his release in the prime week-of-Independence-Day release slot.

Right from the opening scene, actor-turned director Peter Berg tries to show what kind of man this Hancock (Will Smith) is. He's drunk, snoring loudly on a bench, and when a small child prods him awake, he then blows his nose onto the pavement, footballer-style, and slaps a passing woman's posterior.

Hancock is a man in possession of super-strength, and the ability to fly. But every case he gets involved in, he makes a bit of a hash of. We watch him lay waste to a section of highway and ruin countless police cars, all to stop a few gun-toting crims who the cops are chasing.

Los Angeles has had enough of him costing the city millions in damages, and Hancock's profile couldn't possibly sink any lower, until he serendipitously saves the life of Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman). The latter is a public relations guru, who recognises a challenge when he sees one.

He invites Hancock into his home for dinner, introduces him to his wife Mary (Charlize Theron) and son Aaron, and convinces Hancock to listen to his advice. A few weeks later, some time in the slammer and a suitably superhero-esque suit later, and Hancock's a new man.

If this were as far as the plot went in the film's duration, then Peter Berg might have been high and dry with a smash hit which was brilliant to boot. But instead, after some big laughs and great moments, the tone of the film veers wildly into darker, more serious and much less convincing territory.

I won't go into details, safe to say that it involves Charlize's character - well, she's obviously too big a star to have been there to play a token wife.

	Film focus
	Starring:Will Smith, Charlize Theron Director:Peter Berg Running time: 92 mins In a word: Schizophrenic Our verdict: Miss it

Things get disappointingly dramatic for a film which began in such a light-hearted fashion, and the big final revelations just don't make sense. You'll come out with more than a few questions, wondering how such a promising film could go so skew-whiff, courtesy of its duff storyline tangent.

In addition, those of you who won't have been convinced by the idea of Mr Genial Will Smith as an anti-hero, and who'll have been thinking from the off, 'How bad can he really be?', will be rewarded with the answer you'd expect - not really that bad at all.

The actors all do their best, aided by Brit Eddie Marsan as a nasty baddie - whose part seems to have been seriously edited/re-thought - but they've been let down by a crummy bit of exposition and a complete reversal of what audiences thought they were watching.

The latter tactic has worked for some films, turning them into classics, but sadly for we cinemagoers, this is not the case with Hancock.

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