Good if you like the Michael Bay breed of film

Rating: 6/10 (13 June 2008)

The Incredible Hulk is a tough character to adapt and I really think any filmmaker would have trouble making a good film version of the green guy. When a comic book film is adapted to the big screen the movie goer wants a story to balance the action and in this movie we have no story. The entire film is a special effects extravaganza wrapped in between pieces of bad dialouge and characterization. Creating an effective Bruce Banner is key to making any Hulk adaptation work and it hasn't been done yet. The original Incredible Hulk series that is beloved by so many plays like a melodramatic continuation of Adam West's Batman series, and Ang Lee's Hulk, which I feel is still the best adaptation of the story, tried to add too much dramatic substance.
Norton structures the story as a fugitive film where the Hulk is constantly on the run from Ross and his endless search. Ross enlists the help of Emil Blonsky, a skilled agent from the British Marines to help him find the Hulk. Blonsky eventually becomes a super villain which leads to one of the most painfully fake looking CGI battles ever seen.
The main problem with this film is it's script but the acting isn't good enough to salvage it. Edward Norton doesn't really give me a reason to pity him or feel bad about his condition. Sure he says he is haunted by the prospect of the Hulk hurting people but I didn't get any sense of those emotions in Norton's performance. I don't know what went on because Norton is a very talented actor. I sense he tried to underplay this role. On the other hand William Hurt looks like he wanted to overplay the role and he gives the worst performance of his career as General Thunderbolt Ross. I honestly thought he looked silly in the Ross wardrobe and make-up. Hurt overplays this role and his performance is silly. Liv Tyler is a beauty but her methods of soothing the CGI beast look forced and unreal.
Tim Roth is the exception, he is terrific as the villainous Blonsky. He gets too little screen time in my opinion because the way the super soldier injections drive him mad could have made him a more effective villain if he were given more screen time. Roth is underrated actor and he uses the most of his screen time. His dialogue is bad too but he has terrific presence with it. When he bulks up himself the build-up is disappointingly taken away by bad effects and terrible video game dialogue but the performance is still very good.
The action scenes are somewhat interesting and they are well imagined but I just felt that they could have done more with the human aspects of the character or at least have him battle more than just the military.
The Incredible Hulk ends the same way it began, Bruce Banner is on the run and I am still waiting Hollywood to produce a decent adaptation of this character