The Hulk: Mark's Take

Ambitious but ultimately dissatisfying film version of the Marvel comic. A man periodically turns into a not-so-jolly green giant. Ang Lee does the adaptation with ill-calculated sensibility and not much sense.

There are some moments of excitement in HULK, an introspective adaptation of Marvel Comics hero The Hulk. One has the big green smashing machine fighting three monster hulk-dogs, including what may be the screen's first monster French Poodle.

But the film's most intriguing scene has the ultimate in human rage fighting instruments of mechanized warfare, represented by several attack helicopters. It is the 21st century battle of the angry man versus machine. But the moments of real excitement are kept to a minimum for too long in this film.

Until the final third, the film is overly self-conscious and introspective as if Lee, in trying to bring more to the comic book story, lost the original vital essence.

This is a film about rage turning a man into a monster and the audience needs to feel rage or they cannot participate in the experience.

The Hulk on Film

Berkeley scientist Bruce Banner (played by Eric Bana) does bio-medical research. He struggles with the fact he cannot remember his early childhood. He gets his clues in dreams which keep prodding him with images from a past trauma which has cauterized his memories of the past. Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) works with him and strangely also contends with her own images from the past.

Bruce believes himself to be an orphan, but somewhere close by lurks his father David Banner (played by Nick Nolte and in flashbacks by Paul Kersey). His father did something just awful with biomedical discoveries.

We never find out exactly what it was, but it left a legacy in Bruce's genes which when combined with strong radioactivity turns him a pastel green, inflates him like a Macy's float, and allows him to disregard walls and ceilings when he moves his huge bulk around.

Betty's father (Sam Elliot) is an Army general. He knows that some powerful, weapon-related hocus-pocus is going on. and the Army has left him in charge of making sure America gets it first.

This all sounds like it a little more fun than it actually turns out to be. The problem is the film is so dark and so slow to unfold. It takes too long a time to unravel what the mystery incident was even in a film a langurous 136 minutes in length. In fact, we never actually learn the full story. We never even understand exactly what all the scientific research is all about.

Equally strange is why General Ross is given such a free hand to handle the situations he faces in the film. His occasional ineptitude is so obvious that it telegraphs action well before it happens. He also is inept in his relations with his daughter as part of the two dysfunctional parent-child relationships that support the plot structure.

Lee maintains a subdued tone, trying at times to be deep and psychological and even verge on the pseudo-mystical. The Danny Elfman score is not his usual fare but neither is it greatly notable.

Ang Lee bring gravity to superhero stories, but his hand is still unsure. I rate HULK a disappointing 5 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.

There are at least two questions that the film version brings to mind. Bruce Banner seems to have something like 75 kilograms of mass. He at least triples his volume when he becomes the Hulk. Doesn't this make him rather fluffy rather than strong? Certainly it leaves the question of where he gets his strength.

Even more intriguing is the question of how his pants manage to continue to fit his midsection after it expands to several times its size without ripping out the seams. The place where his pre-expansion clothing would naturally be the tightest would be his waistline.

His pants would rip first instead of being the only thing that survives. Lee seems to remember this detail in one or two scenes, at one point showing an elastic waistline, but usually he ignores it, hoping it will not be noticed.

[Everyone seems to be calling the film THE HULK, but the actual title on the screen is just HULK.]