More Entertaining Than "Hulk"

Rating: 8/10 (11 May 2015)

"Transporter" director Louis Leterrier's "The Incredible Hulk" delivers the melodramatic thrills and chills conspicuously lacking in Ang Lee's self-conscious, brooding, tragic predecessor. Edward Norton takes over the role of Bruce Banner from Eric Bana. Ironically, Norton turned the role before Bana took it. Mind you, Norton is an exceptional actor, but he is basically miscast. Simply said, he doesn't look appropriate for the role of an action hero. Meantime, Mark Ruffalo qualifies as the cinema's best Hulk. Meantime, Bana was a better fit, but Norton is not without sympathy. Norton's Banner is a fugitive on the lam. If you have forgotten Ang Lee's "Hulk," Leterrier and Pen use the opening titles to retell the origins of the Hulk in the laboratory. Hardcore Hulk fans may not like this departure from the Marvel canon. The original "Hulk" movie followed the same strategy of orchestrating the transformation in a lab.
As the action unfolds, Leterrier and "Elektra" scenarist Zac Penn have our intelligent hero hiding out in Brazil and slumming as an employee at a dilapidated soda bottle plant. Bruce is their jack-of-all-trades handy man, and his ability to fix things is what gets him into trouble. After repairing a mechanism, he nicks a finger, and droplets of his blood stain the conveyor belt and contaminate one bottle. Clearly, quality control is not a strong point at this factory. When our hero isn't working in the factory, he communicates via the Internet with Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson of "The Astronaut Farmer"), and they struggle to discover a cure. Of course, nothing works for Bruce. At the same time, Bruce is taking lessons from a martial arts mentor about how to control his rage. He wears a watch that monitors his pulse and develops deep-breathing from the diaphragm to curb his rage. Eventually, after that tainted bottle of Pingo Doce reaches America, an ordinary guy ("Hulk" co-creator Stan Lee) in Milwaukee experiences a reaction to it, and General "Thunderbolt" Ross (William Hurt of "Altered States") assembles a team led by an elite commando, Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth of "Reservoir Dogs"), who is locked and loaded for combat. Blonsky and his team fly into Brazil and narrowly miss capturing Banner. Banner's mongrel dog awakens him in time for him to make his escape. Ross congratulates Blonsky for a good job, but Blonsky wants to take another crack at the monstrous green thing he encountered in the factory. "It threw a forklift truck like it was a softball," he tells Ross. Banner makes his way up through Central America and reunites with Ross' daughter, Betty (Liv Tyler of "Armageddon"), and Ross is on his trail again. This time Blonsky and his team are prepared better when they tangle with the Hulk on the Culver University campus. Betty tries to convince Bruce to turn himself over to her father. Bruce points out that Ross wants what is in him and will sacrifice him to extract his DNA to forge an army of super soldiers. Bruce reminds Betty that he wants to find a cure. Again, Ross wants to create super soldiers with Bruce's super strength and agility.
For the record, Banner transforms into the Hulk at about 23 minutes into "The Incredible Hulk." Leterrier stages some reasonably good action scenes. Ultimately, the Penn screenplay boils down to a chase thriller that concludes face to face showdown like an old fashioned western between Banner and Blonsky. Tim Roth makes a terrific adversary, but the final confrontation suffers because you know it is just a clash of CGI titans. Liv Tyler and William Hurt are serviceable as Banner's girlfriend and another of his adversaries. You can get your quotient of blood, gore, and violence out of this PG-13 epic.