The Incredible Hulk

Five years ago, The Hulk was unleashed upon the world, and the world yawned, ridiculed and trashed Ang Lee’s attempt to change the way we look at superheroes. However, I wrote the following, “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.” Well, they did it again, and did it a little better this time around (even if it is not ... wait for it, because you know I have to say it … incredible.).

Ed Norton stars as Bruce Banner – a professor at Culver University whose life was changed forever when he was exposed to Gamma radiation during an experiment. It turned him into a raging monster who injured the woman he loves, Betty (Liv Tyler), and turned her father, General Ross (William Hurt), into an enemy seeking to capture Bruce. Why? Because it was all a secret military experiment to create supersoldiers, and Ross still thinks he can harness the rage that turns Bruce into a big hulking creature with amazing size, strength and speed (with the green skin tone that makes Captain Kirk get a little bit excited).

To capture Bruce, General Ross has brought in a top notch soldier, Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), but can they track down Banner, and how will Blonsky react when he learns about the amazing foe he faces?

I think Hulk is the most difficult of all the comic book heroes to capture on screen. Iron Man, Superman, Spider-Man and Batman all have costumes that are easy to emulate (just look around at Halloween time and you’ll see hundred of the caped crusaders taking your candy), while Hulk is one of us, just bigger and pumped full of more steroids than Rambo, Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire combined. However, director Louis Leterrier and writers Zak Penn and Norton find the angst of being green, in between all of the chases and fight scenes (it’s not easy being green).

While The Incredible Hulk doesn’t have the same depth as Iron Man, nor the same snappy dialogue, which leads to long, dull periods of the movie where Leterrier and company are trying too hard to be weighty and serious (without much success), the audience does get a decent dose of action. The plot is quite simple and straightforward, which is a bit of a disappointment since Penn and Norton do not have to take time to go into the Hulk’s origins (and don’t cover much more than what you see in the opening montage), which left more room for delving into the relationships between Betty, Ross, Banner and others who show up along the way.

However, The Incredible Hulk is a return to the Hulk most of us know through the 1970’s television program (with some cute tips of the hat to the people who made that program such a success), which feels more real. Norton does a good job showing us Banner’s despair at being saddled with this affliction that makes him a lonely wanderer trying to stay safe and avoid hurting others when he cannot control his rage, no matter how hard he tries.

The love story falls horrible flat and yields the least funny moments of supposed levity in the movie, and the first couple of chase scenes satisfied my appetite for destruction enough to make the last couple chases superfluous, buy you cannot deny Leterrier’s ability to capture vivid images. The look in Banner’s eyes as he goes green, the flashes of his transformation into the Hulk and a beautiful shot of Banner and Betty separating for what might be the last time all stand among some of the best images of the summer.

The Incredible Hulk is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action violence, some frightening sci-fi images, and brief suggestive content.