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The Incredible Hulk 2008 |
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Posted on
11:00 p.m. PST June 27, 2008 |
By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff
06/13/2008
The movie studio might call him "The Incredible Hulk," but I
came to think of him as Jose Canseco with an incredibly
swampy tan. When Jose's not barreling through
computer-enhanced Brazilian favelas and destroying most of
Harlem in the finale of this flavorless contraption, he's
sleeping deep down inside a lean, not-as-green Edward
Norton. I must say I prefer his steroidal inner self.
Norton joins Robert Downey Jr. as the season's other very
good actor time-sharing his part with a crack
special-effects department. In "Iron Man," Downey appeared
to be having a flamboyantly good time. Norton is a drag.
This is partly a matter of necessity. Lest he hulk out,
Norton's character, Dr. Bruce Banner, must keep his heart
rate low. The movie tallies for us Bruce's "days without
incident" (158 when we meet him) and follows him miserably
on the run from the government.
This is all explained in a nifty, wordless opening sequence.
The gist of what follows is that General "Thunderbolt" Ross
(William Hurt in a bad Sam Elliott mustache and a worse
mood) is hot to catch Bruce and use his gamma-rich blood to
start a race of supersoldiers. So as on the 1970s television
series that, like the movie, was based on a Marvel Comics
character, Bruce becomes a lonely fugitive.
Norton mopes through the part almost as much as Bill Bixby
did on TV. It's hard to imagine Norton sitting around
thinking, "I've got to get myself in a film that lets me
play a scientist hiding as a drone in a soda factory for
some scenes and as a pizza delivery boy for others. Then in
the really good moments, a big, green monster makes them
forget all about me." But that's what happens.
Whenever Liv Tyler is around, as Betty Ross, Bruce's lady
love and the general's daughter, Norton gets to make moony
faces. Tim Roth doesn't fare much better. He shows up as
Blonsky, a British mercenary working for the general and
eager for a taste of Bruce's power. Needless to say, he gets
it and them some.
The effects crew does a lot of the heavy lifting. Indeed,
all the stunts and effects look expensively impressive. That
big uptown wrecking-ball climax is a rousing, if hectically
edited, spectacle that pits the Hulk against the beast
Blonsky becomes. In the comic, this creature was called the
Abomination. Yet watching these two computer-generated
behemoths go at it is a notch above watching a furious round
of Mortal Kombat.
You may recall that we've been here before - just five years
ago, in fact. The occasion was "Hulk," director Ang Lee's
frigidly received approach to the same comic book, and, boy,
does that movie seem ingenious by comparison. "Hulk" was a
study in psychological stress that still holds up as a
criminally underrated dual character profile. Aside from the
halfhearted blockbuster showdowns, it was an art-movie with
military ambushes.
"The Incredible Hulk" is a commercial rebuke to Lee's
psycho-melodrama. The trouble with blockbusters now is that
there's no room for the risks Lee took, however minimal they
actually were. This rebooted Hulk has been made with minimal
cinematic or psychological value and seems utterly terrified
of exploring the Hulk's erotic possibilities. Betty and
Bruce make out, but stop when his heart speeds up, which
makes you wonder: How many days without incident in that
department?
Of course the movie does bring the green guy back into
franchiseable planetary alignment within the Marvel Comics
universe. If the coda doesn't promise better sequels in the
future then it certainly hints at more synergistic ones.
For now there's a certain pleasure to be had in some of the
physical blowouts. "The Incredible Hulk" has a fearsome
playfulness when its giant star is slamming two hunks of car
together like cymbals or bashing the Abomination's head into
the street. But the best thing in the movie is made of human
flesh. It's Tim Blake Nelson, arriving late as a biology
professor. He's the one scientist in the movie with a
scientist's enthusiasm for discovery. Tyler, by comparison,
plays her biologist like a woman running an art gallery.
Screenwriter Zak Penn knows his Marvel, and director Louis
Leterrier can certainly keep a fight sequence going forever
(he made the two "Transporter" movies). But in their
determination to make a reliable action movie, they forgot
to make an interesting one.
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