High energy action but plastic looking Hulk...

Rating: 5/10 (11 June 2012)

I feel I should be more enthusiastic about this update on the Marvel comic hero, after Ang Lee's dodgy misfire, it could only get better, right?
Being too old and wise (supposedly) to only appreciate the action, I was looking for rather more. Watching on ITV, it's taken a good hour (less on the DVD, adverts considering) for flimsy Edward Norton to really let rip - and I don't just mean his shirt buttons! Throwing tanks around like toys and being blasted by flame-throwers, now, that's real bionic Rambo.
It all starts off too vaguely and slowly and it takes Tim Roth an awful long time before he finally gets going, as a sort of rival to the Hulk, known as 'Abomination', manufactured by the Military to be a fighting machine and eventually gets to fight to the death with Norton's Hulk right at the end, in quite a hell raiser of a climax!
The Beauty & the Beast/King Kong elements, which are evident and profound, where Liv Tyler is calling out to the Hulk in the pouring rain, is touching but just was not exploited enough. Then, snap back to reality and Norton's bruised and battered body lays in a hospital bed. When they go on the run together later, (as human) it's the same old clichéd 'don't use a cell-phone or credit card, because they can trace them' scenario, which admittedly must be new to someone, but surely not many now and where's the chemistry between them?
I'm no up-to-the-minute expert on the latest CGI/latex industry, but the Hulk still looks ridiculous, sticking out like a sore thumb from whatever background or scene he's in. At times, he's no more than a plastic cereal-box toy, a shiny, olive-green plastic figure, albeit a very big one...
That aside, I used to enjoy movies like this when I was ten (or, their equivalents) and I haven't been that for a long time. Whilst I'm moaning, another favourite of mine, an actor capable of great depth and sensitivity, William Hurt, becomes a quite ordinary Army General, though he plays Betty's (Tyler) father.
Of its type, Louis Leterrier's Incredible Hulk is OK and my rating reflects that, but it has to said, even this latest reincarnation already seems dated.