Overall very entertaining but CGI can still be improved upon...

Rating: 8/10 (14 June 2008)

I must agree with some of the positive comments as well as some of the not-so-positive ones. First off I want to say that I'm a huge Hulk fan and was really hopeful that I'd be blown away by this movie. In some aspects, I was. In others, not so much. Props go to the casting director(with two small exceptions), Leterrier's trademark fast-paced direction, his homage paid to the TV series and the somewhat improved CGI. William Norton is perfectly cast for this role. It showed that he researched and really knew the character he was portraying. William Hurt I thought at first would not do as good a job playing Ross as Sam Elliott did but I was completely wrong in that prediction. He was wonderful! Great pacing in this movie. Never a dull moment. True Leterrier style movie-making! The scenes shot in Brazil were breathtaking and my favorite portion of the movie. The disappointments? While Norton resembled Banner better in all aspects than Eric Bana, Liv Tyler pales in comparison to Jennifer Connelly. There never seemed to be much range of emotion from her. Just this constant look of shock/astonishment. Though nice to look at, never does she convince me she has the intellect, confidence or wherewithal a brilliant scientist would exude. She comes off like a little girl in awe of everything happening around her. I'm probably exaggerating here but that is all I can honestly remember about her performance. The other casting gaffe in my opinion was Tim Roth. Not because of his acting ability (he was excellent in that regard) but, instead, because his diminutive stature. As at least one previous poster stated, Roth looks absolutely puny beside Hurt plus, as evidenced in the scenes with his shirt off, his physical conditioning doesn't resemble what I would picture an elite soldier possessing. And what's up with the facial hair? Is that even allowed in the military? Those were the two slight casting flubs in my opinion but the bigger problem I had with the movie was the erratic quality of the CGI. I'm not going to totally bash it like some have because it was excellent at times, like during the closeups. The "cave" scene demonstrated the highs and lows perfectly. Overall I thought that scene fared poorly on the CGI scale but, for a few short seconds, when the camera got especially close to Hulk it looked quite realistic! The Abomination, BTW, looked consistently fantastic and was truly fearsome looking! While Hulk's anatomy was much improved over the 2003 version, I'm not sure Rhythm & Hues upped the illusion of realism that much. Finally, I thought the final scene wasn't as dramatic as it should have been. I'm not saying it was lame by any stretch of the imagination but it definitely could have been improved upon. I didn't see what caused Hulk to get the upper hand on the Abomination after getting his butt kicked thoroughly up until then. Also, after "brilliant" Betty stopped Hulk from justifiably killing the Abomination, how are we to conceive that the military could contain him once he revives? In the comics, even though he always finds a way back into the storyline, we're at least led to believe the Abomination is killed by Hulk. I guess there's always a possibility that's all planned out in the sequel. Maybe the Abomination pairing up with the Leader, possibly leading to Iron Man coming to Hulk's aid? Sounds interesting...
I'd rate it a success overall and worth seeing at least once. For me, I'll wait until it is released in the dollar theater to see it a second time and then anxiously await the DVD release.