ancock - an intriguing high concept pumped out by seven producers, two credited screenwriters, a director who signed on after the others dropped out, and a box office superstar - has its share of surprises, some of them interesting and some of them, well, confusing. But what begins as a sarcastic dark comedy about a surly SuperDerelict with a drinking problem eventually shifts into an incoherent mess of gunshots, yelling and cryptic back story.

Even by superhero standards, Peter Berg's Hancock is not a formula film. But rather, the film, written by Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan (the latter of whom wrote the best episodes of "The X-Files"), pushes hard to revive the comic-book superhero genre - with a superhero who hates everyone and is hated in turn for the chaos he causes.

We first meet the title character, an amnesiac who uses the name John Hancock for convenience, flat on his back and hung-over in between bouts of saving Los Angeles from the usual round of robberies and murders. When a young boy awakens him with a request for help, Hancock, clad in a watch cap and grimy shorts, flies to the scene of the crime and sloppily apprehends the bad guys, causing complete mayhem along the way.

Sure, he may be a superhero. But the problem is, the taxpaying public is irked at Hancock, who can't seem to limit his collateral damage when he fights crime. Even when he's saving people, he manages to tick them off.