Strong Beginning but Poor Romance/Gratuitous effects

Rating: 6/10 (22 July 2008)

The Incredible Hulk starts it's story moving immediately assuming we already know the story lines which is mostly true. This is a good idea as there's a quick prelude and setup to the story. I enjoyed the first 20 min of it pretty well - good pacing, good action, decent acting, and wonderful locale of Brazil capped off with a great chase scene. However Liv Tyler is a poor casting choice and it becomes a problem once she enters the story. Her acting is somewhat vanilla and the romance between her character and Edward Norton's is really flat. Detractingly awful actually. What's worse is there's a good 20 min of it at least during the movie - too much emphasis on a weak link. She needs some better direction and work with the scenes alongside the Hulk CGI too - she looks like she's staring off in different places instead of the Hulk's face. Additionally William Hurt is pretty forgettable as supposedly a brass general as there's too much subdued in his actions and conversations to make him believable as a leader. Edward Norton gives a rather standard performance - not as good as some of his past movies but satisfactory. This new Hulk is lavish with effects, some pretty exciting action sequences, and the Green man looks pretty good more like the comic-book looks like the aim of it. Probably the best performance is by Tim Roth as sort of an over-zealous soldier owing to good writing in this instance. Anyway The Incredible Hulk is not as good as Iron Man (spoiler - if you've seen Iron Man you'll love the cameo.) needing more humor, but definitely better than the earlier recent Hulk by Ang Lee who failed in the look. This is a good effort unfortunately with some standout flaws, but worth a watch certainly. Effects get piled on almost gratuitously towards the end though.