Hulk
Directed by Ang Lee
Starring Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott and Nick Nolte
Visit the website: www.thehulk.com
The Hulk seems to be a particularly divisive movie -- I've heard people I know and trust tell me it stinks, and a reviewer I generally agree with (Roger Ebert's review is here) gave it three stars and seemed to like it well enough.
I'm not sure why it is that this one isn't creating a general consensus, but speaking as someone who's never particularly cared for the character, I enjoyed almost every minute of it.
Lora and I took our two kids, ages 7 and 9, to see it Saturday afternoon at the Madison Theater in Albany, New York. The kids were enthusiastic but not rabid to see it, and speaking as a parent it's always a crap-shoot with taking young children to live-action movies. If it's an engaging action movie (either X-Men film or Spider-Man) they are riveted to the screen, but if it's a loser (Jurassic Park III), the stinging of poorly-spent cash is exacerbated by the squirming, irritated and bored children.
This wasn't the case at all with The Hulk. Yes, the first half-hour or so moves a little slowly -- but it's visually interesting and held their attention, and there's no reason any adult shouldn't be able to watch and enjoy seeing the characters establish themselves. And even my kids recognized and were excited by Stan Lee's cameo ("Hey, that's Stan Lee!").
The script varies wildly from either the TV show or the comics, but pays tribute to both -- with the story really a nice synthesis of many of the themes Peter David dealt with distilled into a fairly compelling drama about rage and generational conflict. All of the actors were fine, with only the Glenn Talbot character being treated two-dimensionally in his motivations and actions. Eric Bana's depiction of Bruce Banner captured well an adult man who is ravaged by circumstance and coincidence -- a sympathetic everyman whose deep-seated, regressive rage is fully justified in the revelations that come later on in the film about things he witnessed as a child.
Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross is a beautiful woman of transcendant beauty whose motivations and attractions are muddled by her relationship with her father; there's a bit of exposition on this topic that falls a bit flat, mostly because it's all there in the acting anyway -- but that's a minor flaw in an unexpectedly good film.
Two other elements that bothered me a little were the somewhat opaque final battle, which could have been explained a bit better (and apparently is in Peter David's novelization; you can read his review here, by the way) -- and the "Shrek Factor," a scene or three where the Hulk isn't quite convincing enough. For the most part, though, he has weight and presence and his rage is astonishing in some scenes -- notably the dogfight in the woods and the battle against some tanks in the desert. More than once I noticed my kids jumping in surprise at unexpected moments on the screen -- they were fully engaged by the story and knocked out by some of the more explosive effects.
Ang Lee's decision to move the entire film along with panels and multiple screens recalls the TV series 24 but takes the technique into a new level of visual complexity. It's entirely seamless and completely effective, giving viewers a tremendous amount of information without once calling attention to how it is that the effect is achieved. I asked my wife about it after the movie, and she hadn't even noticed it -- that's how well-done it is.
I was really genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie. If it hadn't been so damned hot in the theater, I would have happily sat there and watched it again immediately; it's that much fun. If you're looking for a ranking of recent Marvel adaptations, I'd say the two X-Men movies remain the best, Hulk and Spider-Man tie for third after that, with Daredevil limping along in last place. (The Blade movies are good action flicks but not really Marvel Universe material per se).
I'll give the last word on The Hulk to my daughter and her unexpected exclamation during one action scene -- "This is way cooler than the comic books!" In this case, yeah, it is. Grade: 4/5