A truly excellent film...more please!

Rating: 9/10 (8 December 2008)

The summer of 2008 was the season of the superhero at the box office. There was Iron Man, Hancock, Hellboy II, Wanted, and the Dark Knight. However, as impressive as each of these films are, one stands above them. That movie is the Incredible Hulk. However, marred by a highly questionable 2003 entry, it didn't do too well at the ticket booth. Now I hear talk of there not being a sequel to this truly superior film. How very sad.
The Incredible Hulk is an action packed film that, literally, delivers the comic book to the big and small screen. When Banner hulks out in Brazil, the heavily armed and highly trained operatives chasing him were put in a very dangerous predicament. He's kicking around industrial mixing tanks and hi-lo's like they're nothing, and the gunmen were taken down to the last person without the Hulk putting any thought into anything besides getting out of that factory. Later, the Army finds Banner and a proper fight ensues. In this scene we have hummer's, tons of soldiers, APC's, a gunship, and two sonic bombardment cannons. Two words sum this scene upHulk smash. We see Banner's alter tear through all of this equipment like a bull in a China shop. It was just like a comic, but with one difference. In this scene we got to see the Hulk cut loose on a pre-Abomination Emil Blonsky. When that idiot was kicked through the air, only to have his body crushed and bloodied against the trunk of a tree, I knew the ante had been upped.
All of this action of course builds up to the final showdown between the Hulk and the Abomination. In the Dark Knight, Hancock, and Iron Man, the final showdowns were mildly anticlimactic. In the Incredible Hulk, this conflict was more than worthy of the time spent leading up to it. Maybe it was the Hulk turning a cop car into boxing gloves. It could have been him extinguishing a gasoline fire by clapping his hands together. There's always the chance it was the Hulk causing a localized earthquake by stomping his feet on the groundright after yelling out Hulk smash!! For whatever reason, this fight between these two inhuman behemoths is the fight. It's like the big budget, sci-fi equivalent of Martin Riggs vs. Mr. Joshua or, even better, the fight scene in the Bourne Ultimatum. It is brutal, unflinching, awesome, and not to be missed.
But, it's not all smashing. There is a tightly scripted story here as well. This movie eschews the tone of the inferior 2003 production and cuts right to the heart of the matter. Bruce Banner is a scientist, on the run from the government, who has a problem. Seeing how he set up an impromptu lab in Brazil was pretty cool. Later, landing in Mexico after an episode, it was compelling to see him pick up the pieces of his life and soldier on. In a Hulk film, you're supposed to want to see the Hulk. The script for this movie, however, made me not want to see the green guy so much. This is because every time he reared his head, it held catastrophic results for Banner. The writing is so good that it actually made me care more about Bruce Banner than the Hulk. But what is writing without acting to back it up.
Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, William Hurt, Tim Roth, and Tim Blake Nelson all delivered in their roles. Norton really sold Banner's horror over the fact that, if he goes over 200 BPM's, his world just stops and, the next day, he has to rebuild from scratch and live with the consequences of whatever he may have done. Liv Tyler made me believe Betty Ross' anguish over loving someone who was, for all practical purposes, cursed and inordinately dangerous to everyone and everything around him. Sam Elliot's General Ross was the one bright spot in the 2003 film. While William Hurt's take on the character doesn't look as badass, he really embodies the spirit of a man who is utterly obsessed with controlling a force of nature. Emil Blonksy, as portrayed by Tim Roth, is absolutely believable as an old soldier, teetering on obsolescence, who is willing to sell his soul for power. Tim Blake Nelson made the character of Samuel Stern fully his own, by imbuing him with a comical level of intellectual recklessness that flew in the face of all kinds of common sense. The real testament to the strength of this cast, though, was when Betty was helping a threadbare and twitchy Bruce around after an episode. There was no dialogue or anything to suggest what the movie was. However, if a person had been in a coma for the last ten years and didn't know this movie existed, they still would've known what they were looking at from that one image. The acting made what could've been a typical non-scene iconic.
The F/X was a step up from the previous effort. The Hulk, while still the size of a house, was more in proportion. This made it so that his status as a CGI creation was not glaring. The same is to be said of the Abomination, who genuinely looked more imposing here than he did in the comics.
The Incredible Hulk is, in my opinion, the breakout action film of the 2008 summer season. It didn't make the most money. It didn't receive the most acclaim. It didn't have the biggest budget. But, like its namesake suggests, it defies all of this to beincredible. I truly hope Marvel Films realizes they have a viable franchise now that the 2003 version is dead and buried under this leaner, smarter, and vastly superior reboot. Just get the DVD, and see if you can keep your mouth closed and your pulse under 200.