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.

Even when he's saving people, he manages to tick them off.

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.

It's played for edgy laughs at first, but after he saves the life of Ray (Jason Bateman), a publicist whose idealism is infectious, the story shifts its dramatic focus to more of a human connection.

Ray takes pity on Hancock and invites him home to dinner with his wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), and son, Aaron (Jae Head). As a gesture, Ray offers an image makeover, and eventually Hancock agrees to be coached in superhero etiquette. “I'm going to teach you how to interface with the public,” encourages Ray.

The indestructible hero agrees to Ray's plan, acting politely in public and even going to prison briefly for “destroying” a train that crashed into him – until, of course, the cops need his help subduing Red (Eddie Marsan), a madman who has hostages in a bank with bombs. Meanwhile, Ray's wife, who's somewhat attracted to the Hancock, insists that having him around will lead inevitably to tragedy.

But just when you think you have a handle on the sory, it changes direction. Hancock does the right thing - sobers up and foils a bank robbery - before discovering he's not the only one of his kind left; there's a female superhero flying around - and she's not happy with Hancock being on the same turf.

Bateman and Marsan hold down their generic sidekick roles, while Theron brings an adequate range to her little part. As a director, Berg struggles to balance the mix of tones and the conflicts of man and superman, but, really, it's a Will Smith movie, and just a passable one at that, mostly because he IS Will Smith. Unfortunately, even with Smith's big charm and his proven track record as the cinematic king of the Fourth of July weekend, Hancock shows that even superpowers have their limits.