The Incredible Hulk

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

It seems like a risky move to remake an unpopular film just five years after it came out, but then again, as the folks behind The Incredible Hulk will tell you, it's not a "remake" of Ang Lee's 2003 superhero dud. It's more like a "do-over," as in, "we're going to tell a different story, but pretend the first movie never happened." Sure, that's easy to explain to the unsuspecting moviegoer.

Actually, the ads have the right idea - they don't give any explanation whatever, instead simply trying to sell the film on its own merits. That works for me, since I somehow never got around to seeing the first Hulk. Marvel Studios, which produced the new movie, say they made it because it's stupid not to try to capitalize on the second most popular Marvel character after Spider-Man, but frankly I never understood the appeal. He's cool and all, but there's only so much you can do with a barely-sentient monster who likes to smash things. I grew up as much more of an X-Men guy.

After seeing The Incredible Hulk, I'm still not too enthusiastic about the character, but I was happy to discover that the movie is a well-constructed morsel of entertainment; it's neither as good as Iron Man, its Marvel cousin, nor memorable, but it's fast-paced, well-acted, and captures that elusive "comic book feel."

The origin story that so many of these movies get bogged down in is done away with as a series of brief shots over the opening credits: they were doing an experiment, something went wrong, now Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) can turn into the Hulk and is on the run from the government. All we need to know. I love Batman Begins and Iron Man just as much as the rest of you - seriously, they're awesome - but starting a movie without a forty-five minute introductory sequence before the superhero part kicks in is a nice change of pace.

No, this time our hero is already a fugitive: living in Brazil, working at a bottling factory, trying desperately to both find a cure and control his anger. His anonymity doesn't last long, of course, as General Ross (William Hurt) soon tracks him down and leads a crack team to capture him led by wildcard soldier Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth).

Banner escapes, of course, in order to head back to the States and meet up with his old flame Betty (Liv Tyler), the General's daughter, but not before he Hulks out on the soldiers. The scene is a great slow-reveal of what the big green giant looks like; it's slightly diminished by knowing exactly what he looks like already from the ads, but what can you do?

The incident further confirms to the General that Banner needs to be locked up and his power needs to be extracted - obsessed with the technology that led to Banner's transformation, General Ross dreams ...