Sunday, June 15, 2008
A+E, Movies, Reviews

‘Hulk’ a qualified smash

Franchise reboot not ‘Incredible,’ but satisfying action flick

Courtesy of Universal Pictures/Marvel Studios

“THE INCREDIBLE HULK”
Edward Norton, Liv Tyler
Directed by Louis Leterrier 
Rated PG-13
Wide release

By Kevin Forest Moreau

“The Incredible Hulk,” which bounds into theaters less than two months after “Iron Man,” shares a few things in common with its high-tech predecessor. Both were produced in-house, as it were, by Marvel Studios, which clearly knows more about how to make good movies based on its properties than the studio folks behind “Daredevil,” “Elektra,” “Ghost Rider,” etc. And both are part of a series of interconnected movies slated to come together with “The Avengers” in 2011.

But the most striking similarity is that like “Iron Man,” “The Incredible Hulk” is that rare superhero flick less concerned with video game-style action (well, mostly) than with the idea of redemption. But where “Iron Man” focused on a weapons manufacturer’s quest for absolution, “Incredible Hulk” is chiefly concerned with redeeming its main character’s franchise potential and pop-cultural credibility after the artistic and commercial belly-flop of Ang Lee’s 2003 “Hulk.”

The makers of “Incredible” know that no one was pining for a sequel to that sluggish, self-conscious film—so they didn’t make one. Instead, this “Hulk” is a re-imagining that jettisons everything about the previous movie, restarting the clock at square one with a brisk Cliff’s Notes version of the character’s origin (bookish scientist Bruce Banner bombards himself with Gamma radiation in a government experiment gone wrong, transforming into a roaring, green-skinned behemoth) before the opening credits have finished rolling.

Unencumbered with a laborious backstory, “Hulk” leaps into action right away. We catch up with the beleaguered Banner (Edward Norton) in Brazil, where he’s meditating, learning to control his emotions and working at a bottling plant. He’s also covertly corresponding with a fellow researcher known only as “Mr. Blue,” who believes he may be close to a cure for Banner’s condition.

But the army—in the person of the project’s leader, Gen. Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt)—doesn’t want Banner cured; it wants to make him into a weapon. Having zeroed in on his quarry’s location, Ross dispatches a specialized team of soldiers, led by Russian-born Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), to capture him, sparking the movie’s first CGI action sequence and pulse-quickening chase scene. This sets the pace for the movie’s first two-thirds, which whiz by with a man-on-the-run intensity not dissimilar to the “Bourne” trilogy as Banner races to retrieve some critical data while staying a step ahead of his pursuers, reuniting with his lost love, Elizabeth “Betsy” Ross (Liv Tyler), in the process.

Screenwriter Zak Penn and director Louis Leterrier cater to the Comic-Con crowd with several references to the source material: The online interchanges between “Mr. Blue” and Banner’s “Mr. Green” are taken from a comics storyline of a few years ago, and Tim Blake Nelson plays a scientist named Samuel Sterns, the alias of one of the comic-book Hulk’s recurring antagonists. And of course, Hulk co-creator Stan Lee makes his inevitable cameo. There are also several nods to the 1970s “Incredible Hulk” television show, including a Lou Ferrigno cameo, a brief glimpse of the late Bill Bixby, and a winking reference to the show’s classic line, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

But “The Incredible Hulk” isn’t an insular valentine to the character’s fans. It may be little more than a special effects-laden popcorn B-movie—equal parts “The Fugitive” and “Frankenstein”—but it’s a very well-executed one, with flourishes such as an occasional onscreen countdown that tracks the number of days since Banner’s last Hulking out. Leterrier proves he’s a smarter director than he’s previously been given credit for; his “Transporter 2” was a similarly enjoyable piece of action-adventure fluff that benefited, as “Hulk” does, from low expectations.

And blessed with Marvel’s refreshing tactic of hiring capable, respectable actors, he wisely lets his cast play to their strengths. Norton invests his role with a persuasive mix of intelligence and despair, making Banner an effortlessly sympathetic figure, while the luminous Tyler projects a steely determination and touching sensitivity into a standard damsel-in-distress template.

Roth, as the lifelong soldier who willingly undergoes an experiment to become a Hulk-like being called the Abomination, gets into the spirit of things, and Nelson, as Banner’s cryptic online contact, delivers a giddy, off-the-rails performance that almost steals the show. The one false note is struck by Hurt, who’s just slightly miscast as the film’s gruff Ahab in pursuit of his own Moby Dick. (Hurt’s far better at playing oddball antagonists, as his far creepier turn in “A History of Violence” proved.)

It’s well known that Norton clashed with the studio over the film’s final cut; if his misgivings were centered with the movie’s climactic battle, he may have had a point. The film’s frenetic, even frantic pace is arrested by a typical CGI slugfest that delivers some ingenious adrenaline-pumping moments (such as the Hulk using two pieces of a smashed police car as boxing gloves), but nevertheless feels rote and overly familiar by superhero flick standards.

But that nagging criticism isn’t enough to overshadow the pleasantly surprising jolt of what’s come before. If it’s not quite as clever or endowed with as much heart as “Iron Man,” “The Incredible Hulk” is nonetheless an enjoyable slice of summer action-movie escapism that yields tangible, if fleeting, rewards. 2.5 STARS