The Hulk Review
by Michael J. Gold (mjgold01 AT yahoo DOT com)June 23rd, 2003
Hulk **1/2
Directed By: Ang Lee
Written By: John Turman, Michael France and James Schamus Music By: Danny Elfman
Bruce Banner: Eric Bana
Betty Ross: Jennifer Connelly
Ross: Sam Elliott
David Banner: Nick Nolte
Talbot: Josh Lucas
Running Time: 2:18
Rated PG-13 (for sci-fi action violence, some disturbing images and brief partial nudity)
Reviewed by: Michael J. Gold
Back in the mid-sixties, scientist David Banner worked on a secret military base out in the middle of the desert and lived with his wife Edith out in the little town that grew up around it. David was working on a way to genetically improve the human body and when the government forbade him to use human test subjects he began to test upon himself. Then David had a son, Bruce, and quickly realized that he had passed on his altered genes to Bruce. He began to work to try to cure his son, however, the government discovered that he had been testing on humans and shut down his lab.
Years passed and Bruce grew up in a foster home never knowing his mother or father. He had become a brilliant young scientist himself, and as fate would have it, was working on same sorts of theories that his father had over thirty years earlier. An accident in his lab causes something strange to happen to Bruce. Old wounds have healed and he soon discovers that anger can unleash a monstrous hulk inside of him.
"Hulk" is far the closest thing to an actual comic book film, though I'm not certain that this is a good thing. Comic Books are one medium and film is another. It was an interesting experiment to see the two fused together as best they could be, but the result is a splitting and rearranging of the screen often times when characters are still talking drawing us out of the story to try to notice what's going on in the other panels.
The colors in the film also help to integrate the comic book feel. Though best done in the wretched "Dick Track" the use of color is perhaps one of the best ways to link a film to a comic. The hulk himself is a completely computer generated creation and at times looks fantastic. Other times the effects are simply silly and distracting. In CGI work similar to that seen in "Spider-man," the hulk leaps incredible distances bouncing like the little dot in a sing-along-song video.
The story is very slow focusing on the human aspects of the two main characters and their past, pushing the creature story off such that the hulk does not even make an appearance until a full hour into the film. When he does, the military, as usual, utilizes an abundance of ordnance in an effort to try to stop the creature. It seems that the obvious and more logical strategy would have been to let him calm down and revert back into Bruce Banner who can be more easily handled, however, that is not the essence of action movies or comic books.
Ang Lee is a virtuoso director who favors strong female roles. In "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" he gave us as many as three strong female characters and here in "Hulk" he entrusts that role to Jennifer Connelly. The Oscar winner of "A Beautiful Mind" does an adequate job as does the rest of the cast, but are treated as stereotypes instead of real people. The result feels more subdued as though Lee required the film to first be a melodrama and accepted a comic book hero by necessity.
Copyright 2003 by Michael J. Gold
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