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Back Shelf Beauties
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The Hulk When I first starting thinking about The Hulk, I was worried about the Godzilla effect. Remember a few years ago when Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin decided to remake Godzilla? It was one of the most hotly anticipated films of the year, and a sure fire box office smash waiting to happen. Then, we saw the movie. Their Godzilla didn't resemble the Godzilla we grew to know and love. It looked like a dinosaur straight out of Jurassic Park. People freaked, the word got out, and the movie never lived up to expectations. That was my worry about The Hulk. He would look fake and the movie would be ruined despite a good story. However, quite the opposite happened. The Hulk looks good, but the script and director make the movie stink. Eric Bana stars as Dr. Bruce Krensler - a scientist working on a way to heal injuries quickly by using gamma rays. Little does he know that, years ago, he was Bruce Banner - son of a crazed military scientist, Dr. David Banner (Nick Nolte), who also was working on a similar project, among other things, in an attempt to create supersoldiers for the US military. When his experiments started to go too far, the military shut him down, which sent him into a rage, and led to Bruce being removed from the family. Years later, Dr. David Banner is back to finish something he started way back then. After a horrible accident in the lab, Bruce is exposed to high amounts of gamma rays. He should have died, but, it appears as if he wasn't effected. At least, we don't see the effect until he gets angry. What is Dr. David Banner up to? What did he do to Bruce? Why was Bruce removed from the family? That's a very quick synopsis of what could have been a more intricate and better explained plot. In addition to Dr. David Banner, the audience is teased with information about some military tech company that wants to use Bruce for unknown reasons, a whole backstory between David Banner and General Ross (Sam Elliott) that feels like it should be more important, a relationship between General Ross's daughter Betty (Jennifer Connolly) and Bruce, plus more. Unfortunately, Director Ang Lee and the three writers were unable to explain it all to me, which is too bad. All of it together seems to be very interesting and intellectually stimulating, but Lee sacrifices it to give us more action. I rarely say this, but at 2 hours and 20 minutes, The Hulk isn't long enough. Lee should have taken more time to delve into these other plot points. At times, The Hulk has great special effects, but we are also treated to some of the worst B-movie effects I have seen on film. Some explosions look silly and some of the fight scenes, ones that take place at night, are too dark for the audience to follow the action and appreciate the computer generated images. Is this to cover up flaws, or poor editing? And, what's with The Hulk going all Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (also directed by Lee)? You'll see what I mean when you watch the movie. After reading interviews where Ang Lee was announcing to the world that he was going to add some class to superhero movies and American blockbusters, I was extremely disappointed in the lack of meaningful dialogue in the film. Even for an action film, this is weak stuff. Plus, Lee throws in all sorts of odd editing tricks like picture in picture, picture next to picture, etc. that don't seem to have any purpose other than to show that he can do it. A friend of mine argued that this was to make the film look like a comic book, but it's a movie and should look like one. If the technique made sense, I could live with it, but in The Hulk, it's just used to show off. I was also annoyed with constant editing in the middle of lines of dialogue. In the middle of sentences, we jump to a new angle on the speaker, again, for no good reason or purpose. It's annoying. Eric Bana is the other problem I have with The Hulk (as if I haven't dumped on this one enough). He seems too wooden and does not give a performance that matches his co-star, Connolly. She understands the subtleness of the story and her role as romantic love interest, even though the script doesn't do the best job of spelling that out. Overall, The Hulk is a disappointment. I hope someone gets a chance to redo it again in the future, but does it right. In the middle of all this, a good story yearns to be told. Grade: D Copyright 2003 - WaffleMovies.com
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