The Incredible Hulk film rating and review

The Incredible Hulk (2008) Film Rating and Review :

Rating :

Acting – 5/10
Direction – 5/10
Screenplay – 4/10
Plot – 4/10
Technique – 7/10

Review :

The Adequate Hulk

Five years ago there was a movie about Dr Bruce Banner; a scientist who, when agitated, turns large and green. It was called Hulk and it didn’t do very well, either with critics or with the legions of comic-book fans expected to sacrifice a portion of their pocket money every summer to keep the studios afloat. Now Universal and Marvel, every bit as indomitable as their rampaging asparagus-coloured intellectual property, have given the franchise another try.

The new movie about poor Dr Banner, directed by Louis Leterrier (The Transporter) from a script by Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand), is called The Incredible Hulk. But let’s not get carried away: The Adequate Hulk would have been more suitable title. There are some big, thumping fights and a few bright shards of pop-cultural wit, but for the most part this movie seems content to aim for the generic mean. If you really need a superhero to tide you over until Hellboy and Batman resurface next month – and honestly, do you? Really? Why? – I guess this big green dude will do.

The latest Hulk, a computer generated behemoth with torn pants and tousled hair, is a slightly improved version of the character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby 46 years ago, though a cameo appearance by Lou Ferrigno, the Hulk on the old television series, may induce some fond nostalgia for the analog days when a superhero could be impersonated by an actual person. When calm, Bruce Banner is played, in The Incredible Hulk, by Edward Norton, who emphasizes the character’s somber, cerebral side. To avoid turning green and bursting out of his clothes, Bruce must keep his pulse low, and Mr. Norton, ever the professional, is careful not to do anything too exciting.

The original story, dwelled upon at great length in Hulk, is here telescoped into a neat little montage that accompanies the opening titles. Bruce was conducting research for the army under the supervision of a cigar-smoking general (William Hurt), whose daughter, Betty (Liv Tyler), was Bruce’s girlfriend. The experiment was horribly wrong and Bruce escaped to Brazil, where he lives with his dog in a hillside slum and works at a soda factory.

“Get our agents to look for a white man in that bottling plant!” the general barks when he learns of Bruce’s whereabouts. Though Brazil is home to millions of people who might fit the general’s description, the military has no trouble finding Bruce’s modest little home. A member of the squad sent to bring him in – the general wants Bruce’s data for further study, you see – is a hard case named Blonsky (Tim Roth) who you know will turn out to be the Hulk’s nemesis even before he shoots Bruce’s dog. In the meantime, after Bruce’s pulse rate spikes, the Hulk is glimpsed through the murk of night-vision goggles and in shadow, smoke and soda-pop vapor.

The creature looks better that way than he does when, a while late; he emerges in the light of day. Though the Hulk’s distended muscles are impressively veined – he looks less rubbery, and therefore more credible, than his precursor in Hulk – the scale and proportion of his body doesn’t seem quite right. His head is weirdly small; his size in relation to other people and objects appears to fluctuate. Also, why is his hair so much darker than Norton’s?

That there is no resemblance between them is perhaps to be expected, but it also exposes a genetic flaw that makes The Incredible Hulk less interesting – clumsier; more brutish – than many of its comic-book-derived counterparts. Superhero movies depend not only on virtuosic special effects or action set pieces, but also, perhaps even more, on the psychological drama of existential division. The better superhero performances explore the tensions inherent in their protagonists’ double lives. But the contradictions and continuities between Bruce Banner and the monster he becomes figure surprisingly little in The Incredible Hulk. When Betty asks Bruce what the transformation feels like he answers that the Hulk ‘isn’t me’, and in taking this disavowal at face value the movie sacrifices opportunities for pathos as well as humour.

Without a vivid, complex character at the centre of the movie, even the more inspired bits – Tim Blake Nelson’s tenured mad scientist, a climactic battle on the streets of Harlem – feel perfunctory and familiar. A middling superhero movie! I wish I could say that was incredible.

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