Ang Lee’s Hulk is a lot like the titular green goliath and his mild-mannered scientist alter ego, Bruce Banner: it’s a wimpy psychological drama that occasionally transforms into a monstrously enjoyable summer action movie. But as was the case with the Taiwanese director’s last feature, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the psychological stuff adds a surprising (and surprisingly welcome) level of depth to the genre material.
Of course, that depth was already there for the mining. Whether in his original comic form, or as Lou Ferrigno in the now-classic TV series, the Hulk has always represented something that has universal psychological appeal. He’s the ultimate expression of repressed rage, an ultra-powerful Hyde lurking just beneath the surface of our civilized Jekyll manners, waiting for some jackass to provoke us so he can literally burst out of our clothing (except for those torn purple shorts, that is) and start smashing everything in sight.
The Hulk certainly smashes his share of hardware (military and otherwise), and there’s at least one great scene that brings back all the best moments in the TV show when milquetoast Bill Bixby was finally pushed around a bit too much by somebody. But the film spends far more of its two-hours-plus running time explaining why Dr. Bruce Banner (Australian newcomer Eric Bana) is so repressed. In fact, all the Freudian goings-on are likely to disappoint those who go in expecting to see little more than the jade giant lumbering around yelling, “HULK SMASH!”
The film even sets up an Oedipal parallel with Banner’s research partner and onetime lover, Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly, who amply demonstrates her ability to summon tears at will). Bruce Banner’s long-lost father David (Nick Nolte) was a military scientist whose unauthorized genetic experiments on himself caused a mutation to pass down to his son. Meanwhile, Betty’s father (played by Sam Elliott) is an army general nicknamed “Thunderbolt.” Her earliest childhood memory is of him leaving her alone in a diner. He also happens to be the man who had Banner’s father locked away for something that happened years earlier on a desert military base—something that would be Bruce Banner’s earliest childhood memory if he could just remember all of it. (With fathers like these, who wouldn’t be screwed up?)
Although both bad dads spout some of the corniest dialogue in recent memory, the Nolte character is a standout, running the gamut from loopy rants about his “unique” son to thinly disguised loopy rants against the Bush administration’s foreign policy. The film threatens to veer completely into campy nonsense every time he’s on screen, especially considering how much he looks like the dog-adopting derelict in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros. The resemblance is obviously intentional, but inexplicable except as some kind of daffy homage.
Fortunately, the biggest influence on Hulk is the long-running comic book, and it shows in both form and content. Several scenes use a clever (if occasionally distracting) inset-panel technique reminiscent of a comic layout; as for ol’ greenskin himself, the film is as faithful as post-Gollum CGI effects technology can make it. The Hulk’s gamma-ray-bomb origin gets a modern pseudoscientific update that involves microscopic “nanomeds,” and his computer-endowed physical attributes reduce poor Lou Ferrigno to a five-second cameo appearance. This Hulk runs as much as 15 feet tall, hurls battle tanks like he’s doing a hammer throw, and has a three-mile long jump. Best of all, the madder he gets, the bigger and stronger he gets. But the film’s most remarkable achievement in bringing the Hulk off the page is making him move fast. Whether he’s running from attack choppers or flinging tons of steel through walls, he moves with a speed and fluidity that gives the short but inventive action scenes all the breathtaking energy that was lacking in The Matrix Reloaded’s slo-mo fight scenes.
Although it shares the same Marvel Comics roots as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Bryan Singer’s X-Men films, Hulk is only nominally a superhero flick (which might explain why “The Incredible” is left out of the title). Instead, it preserves the comic’s ambivalence; by the nature and sheer extent of his rage-driven strength, the Hulk can be as dangerous to innocent people as he is to his enemies.
That said, the film does tip the balance in favour of the heroic aspect—especially the Hulk’s King Kong-like weakness for the lady in his life—but it does so infrequently enough to avoid being cheesy. (After all, you can’t be a raging, mindless monster and still help old ladies cross the street.) Too bad the same can’t be said of the ending, which makes a sequel as mandatory as hearing Banner utter the line, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” Nevertheless, Hulk is worth seeing whether you’re after a different kind of superhero movie, or a different kind of psychological drama.
(3.5/4)