Film of the week: The Incredible Hulk

Published on Friday 13 June 2008 20:09

*** Director: Louis Leterrier Running time: 114 minutes ***

FIVE years ago, Marvel's worst fears were realised when the opening weekend of their movie revealed Hulk to be no smash, as Ang Lee's agonised rendition of the tantrum-throwing guy in green failed to do incredible business at the box office. It's crimes were many; action sequences staged with all the embarrassment of Judi Dench doing porn, a Hulk who didn't show up for almost an hour, Jennifer Connelly endlessly tearful in close-up and an inert Eric Bana playing his character as Incredibly Peeved.

Now in a tricked-out retake, Transporter director Louis Leterrier has started from scratch – with one notable exception. Playing the security guard on the university campus where The Hulk was born is Lou Ferrigno, still affectionately remembered for playing the Hulk like a seasick body builder in the Eighties TV series. Thirty years on, the Hulk is an entirely computer-generated special effect, who looks nothing like our redux Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) and rather more like a roaring, pneumatically muscled giant with the instincts of a bouncer.

Apart from lending the movie's dopey dress-up cachet and some input with the screenplay, Norton's main job is to look beleaguered, although the film goes to some lengths to assure us that this Bruce is not the angst-ridden cry-baby of 2003 by having him hide out in the Brazilian slums, humping crates in a bottling plant and learning the local lingo by studying a dubbed Grover on Sesame Street. The Hulk may be incredible but his jokes in this film are puny creatures. Trying out his concussed Portuguese, Banner warns a potential assailant: "Don't make me… hungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry."

The rest of his downtime is spent meditating, making dinner for himself and his dog, and getting slapped by some sort of anger-management guru so he can learn to maintain a low pulse rate and keep a leash on his Hulk alter-ego. Regrettably, it occurs to me that Banner could watch The Incredible Hulk with little fear of getting over-excited. And yet the first half of the film seems promising, with a rooftop chase sequence that offers Bourne Identity-style chops in order to evade a US military who are determined to exploit Banner's bad luck and create an invincible super-soldier.

With his cover blown, Banner is forced back to the campus lab where his troubles began. Here he reconciles with his abandoned girlfriend Dr Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) and is forced to deal with a hardcore antagonist called Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth). A Special Forces soldier, Blonsky only flinches when someone estimates his age as 45 (he's 39) and eventually with the aid of a military serum, he regenerates into a CGI monster named the Abomination.

The most noticeable difference between the two is that while Hulk is shirtless and favours stretchy pants to cover his little hulk, the Abomination is bald, raw-boned, muscular and naked, with no genitals at all. I'm guessing there were some steroids in his chemical cocktail. What Marvel hasn't come to terms with is that the Hulk is really not a very interesting superhero. He's not even that heroic since Banner's transformation is not designed to pursue justice or protect the weak; the Hulk is simply a loud, antisocial expression of rage.

If anything, the 2008 incarnation flattens out the nuclear-age Jekyll and Hyde complexity even further: previously Banner had a multiple personality disorder that he rather enjoyed. In this version, it's just a disability he's trying to cure. Hospital appointments have generated more soul-searching. Towards the end, there's a strong sense that the movie simply gives up and surrenders itself to a 26-minute demolition derby between the Hulk and Abomination, where the two of them fling around tanks, punch out helicopters and administer general scene-trashing kerrang. The look on Norton's face by the end might just well be the same expression he wore when he realised his film was going to resemble one of those Japanese smackdowns between Godzilla and Mothra.

If you've come to The Incredible Hulk primarily to see the verdant giant generate mind-numbing pandemonium, you may walk away happy. The rest of us would have preferred a more credible Hulk.

• On general release from Friday

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