Emergency 9-1-1
Immigrants in superhero movies tend to be cast as either criminals or local color, to give their metropoli grittiness and veracity. Aasif Mandvi’s pizzeria owner in Spiderman 2 existed for little reason but to reassure audiences that yes, this is New York.
The drunk superhero movie Hancock is no exception. Pritam Singh Biring plays the token immigrant here, along with an SUV-load of unruly Asian gangbangers. Biring is, of course, Cornershop Uncle, and he is, of course, taken hostage by thugs. Meanwhile Will Smith as Hancock tries to buy two wino-sized bottles of bourbon. Uncle rings up the purchase as $91.10, covers the zero and tries to make Hancock understand that the bad guys are behind the counter — 9-1-1. But it also reads 9/11, and the sight of a turbaned Sikh at gunpoint in America is an uncomfortable reminder of the death of Balbir Singh Sodhi, shot by a 42-year-old Moron-American a week after the towers fell.
Hancock is the latest movie to be marketed deceptively. Pitched as a popcorn flick for the July 4th weekend, it’s actually a melancholy story of the redemption of a down ‘n out black man, along the lines of The Pursuit of Happyness. Though it happily lifts from My Super Ex-Girlfriend, down to the statuesque blonde and the marine animal tossed by the tail, it’s far from a rom-com and not at all like Smith’s Independence Day. Throughout the movie he wears a rictus of dismay. Hancock is a damaged man, though he’s not quite sure why. All he knows is he woke up in Miami with two tickets to Frankenstein in his pocket.
Halfway through we find out his backstory, and the tonal shift is so jarring as to make the flick seem as hastily sewn-together as Mary Shelley’s monster. Suddenly it changes from Happyness to X-Men before reverting to a daytime weepy. It’s almost as if the marketing team saw early rushes, began sweating at how far they were from the campaign and forcibly tacked on a superhero throwdown. The first half of the movie is the fairly interesting concept of a regular guy superhero, Smith’s take on M. Night’s Unbreakable, though that wouldn’t have justified its lyin’, cheatin’ marketing.
Smith looks like a homeless man for much of the movie, which never explores the race and class issues behind turning a widely-reviled black bum into a popular American superhero. Charlize Theron spends most of her character in ‘we have to talk’ terrain, her eyes emitting daggers. Jason Bateman plays a variant of his soul-killing accountant from Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. Like a less frenetic Woody Allen, he’s the most passive-aggressive actor in Hollywood today.
Here’s the trailer:
on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008, 4:31 pm in Film, Sikhs, Video clips › 
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I liked naughty will smith in Fresh prince of LA..He is very good at naughty comedy roles but these days he does a lot of action, serious fiction..
He went to India last year and everyone had great fun with him..he wants to do a movie with our aishwarya but she has no time for him..
Will smith is the most powerful man in bollywood..and our Mr and Mrs obama are fans of will smith..obama says he wants will smith to play his role in obama movie..and smith has political plans…I feel here is another man who is destined to greatness..
Will Smith plays every role the same way… as Will Smith. What’s also interesting is that he’s a Scientologist, yet has managed to avoid the backlash that Tom Cruise has faced. I’ll be giving this one a skip.
Will Smith is another dull scientology clone, no matter how much he ‘urbans up’ his characters. And what is up with the ridiculous amount of product placement in his movies?
That’s because he brought a wife into the scene. If he were single (and, let’s be honest, white), he wouldn’t have half of his market.
Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot multiple times and killed on September 15, 2001, four days after the attacks — not “a week after the towers fell.” I’m surprised and disappointed a site interested in South Asian affairs would be mistaken on this significant fact. Also Sodhi wasn’t approached at “gunpoint,” Frank Roque shot him in the back; so any relationship between the film and Sodhi’s death predicated on that is misplaced.
More generally, the Sikh in the film did the “right” thing by alerting Smith’s character of the hidden individuals. Pritam Singh’s character may be a token, but he may also represent the countless, honest, hardworking immigrants who come to this country and happen to either work or own convenience stores or liquor stores. In other words, a Sikh behind a counter in a film is not per se “wrong.”
I think the link between Pritam Singh’s character and Sodhi’s death is tenuous at best.