The Jolly Green Giant Can Hold His Head Up with Pride This Time Around

Rating: 7/10 (1 July 2008)

If you were hoping for a big-screen version of the Hulk that would clear the vomit taste from your mouth left by Ang Lee's debacle a few years ago, you're in luck. This new film that starts over with the Hulk's story is lean, mean and green, much like its titular troubled soul. That troubled soul, who exists under the geeky guise of Bruce Banner during his more laid back moments, is played by Edward Norton, and that's largely why this film is better. Superhero movies are a dime a dozen anymore, and they all, to a lesser or greater extent, look and sound the same. One of the only things that distinguishes one from the other is the quality of the acting, which is why this film can hold its head up with that other surprisingly good superhero film from earlier this summer, "Iron Man".
Along with Norton, "The Incredible Hulk" features William Hurt, as the standard slightly crazy Army general that we all love to hate, Tim Roth, as the Hulk's nemesis, The Abomination, and Liv Tyler as Betty, the love interest. Tyler and Hurt get put through the usual acting paces their roles would suggest, which means Tyler must look worried and Hurt must glower, but they look worried and glower well, respectively. And the idiosyncratic casting of Roth as the film's villain actually lends the film a bit of novelty.
By the end, the movie devolves into an action film indistinguishable from any other, all deafening sound effects and been-there-done-that CGI. But everything leading up to that is slightly better than average for the genre.
Grade: B+