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STEVE PERSALLMore psychodrama than action film, Hulk focuses on how Bruce Banner became a mean green angst-filled machine.
Ang Lee's version of Hulk is the first comic book superhero movie that might fit well into an art house theater's lineup. That will be interpreted as a compliment by some viewers and a complaint by those who like their summertime flicks dumb and loud. Certainly there is more talk in this film than action, and the action brings up another possible sticking point: that the computer-generated green monster looks too bogus to impress.
Lee takes an impressive gamble, not only with a reported $120-million budget but also with the expectations and attention spans of moviegoers. Hulk is more concerned with "how," not "pow": how the closeted family skeletons of a scientist named Bruce Banner (Eric Bana), combined with a massive dose of gamma rays, turn him into a 15-foot behemoth with a bad attitude. What the beast does with that powerful body is less crucial, mostly escaping from military forces inspired by a personal grudge.
Once again, like Spider-man, the first X-Men film and Daredevil, we have a movie constructed around origins, not resolutions. Those will come in the sequels, unless Lee and three screenwriters, including St. Pete Beach resident Michael France, have severely overestimated the audience's desire to psychoanalyze its superheroes. Hulk lugs around more emotional baggage than those other Marvel Comics characters combined. It's fascinating stuff but not always satisfying from an escapist's perspective.
Banner's background story plays out for nearly 40 minutes before Hulk emerges. It shows his Army scientist father, David (Paul Kersey), immersed in regenerative biology experiments in 1967. Dad is a budding mad scientist, especially when tough Gen. Thunderbolt Ross (Todd Tesen) fires him from the program. But not before David injects himself with an experimental serum, the raging effects of which are passed through his pregnant wife to their son, Bruce.
Time passes, and Bruce, since adopted by another couple, grows into Bana but still not Hulk. We learn what a dedicated scientist he has become and about his failed romance with colleague Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly), who happens to be the daughter of that aforementioned general, now even tougher because he's played by Sam Elliott. Bruce gets a dual-edged rival (Josh Lucas), a jolt of gamma radiation to sweeten his mutation and the news that his father (now Nick Nolte) is alive and still crazy after all these years.
A conventional comic book movie would get to the mean green stuff as soon as possible, then introduce an archvillain to test the superhero's mettle. Not this time. Lee bypasses predictability in favor of exploring Bruce and Betty's family dynamics, a common thread among his works, including The Ice Storm, The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman. Lee's attempt to raise the emotional stakes of a blockbuster is admirable, yet it feels slightly drawn out, creating a lower ratio of action to emotion than these incredible circumstances deserve.
When Banner becomes Hulk, the film's pulse - and the audience's - quickens. As a frequent critic of using computer-generated images to replace actors, I find the new Hulk to be the best example of how the technology should be used. Hulk must be more imposing than even strongman Lou Ferrigno in the memorable TV series. Aside from a few techno-mechanical motor skills, the computer-generated image of Hulk is impressively designed. Placing a digitized version of Bana's facial structure on the head is a nice touch, more expressive than computer-generated image experiments in Final Fantasy and Shrek. I'd just like to see more Hulk.
In this movie, Hulk doesn't have any mission except survival, crashing through buildings and leaping across a desert in Lee's muted extension of the gravity-defying antics in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Hulk gets one exciting fight scene, against a pack of mutant dogs, that reaches comic book proportions, but mostly he's on the run. Lee's last act of defiance against blockbuster rules occurs when the movie devolves into a talkoff between Bruce and his father resembling an episode of Inside the Actors Studio but then erupts into a fireworks display that the rest of the movie slaved so hard to avoid.
Lee does make the psychodrama look interesting with an assortment of pans, reverse zooms and wipes whisking the plot along, plus a split-screen motif that turns the screen at times into a replica of comic book panels. But even that tactic gets stale over a 138-minute running time. Everything that Lee and his writers attempt with Hulk is admirably fresh. But they occasionally try too hard to set themselves apart from the superhero pack, perhaps leaving behind the most important pack, the audience.
Hulk will paint the box office green this weekend for the same reason that a lesser film such as Daredevil did: the devotion of Marvel Comics fans (you'll know them by their applause for cameos by Ferrigno and Marvel mogul Stan Lee) and moviegoers seeking another Spider-man thrill. I expect that their reactions to Lee's pulp art will be mixed. As usual with superheroes, a better sequel likely awaits now that the introductions are out of the way.
Hulk
Grade: B
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Nick Nolte, Sam Elliott, Josh Lucas
Screenplay: John Turman, Michael France, James Schamus, based on characters created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee
Rating: PG-13; sci-fi action violence, disturbing images, brief nudity
Running time: 138 min.