The Hulk
Ang Lee's first film since the warmly received but overrated "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is anything but small. It's the major comic franchise, The Hulk. But Lee's big ideas for this green man ultimately fall flat. The action takes us to a desert base known as "Desert Base" where David Banner is working on some genetic resequencing. When his military boss, Ross, rejects the use of human subjects, David instead chooses to experiment it on himself. When his wife announces she's pregnant and has their baby, David finds that Bruce has inherited the altered genes. The consequences of this boy even being alive eventually forces Bruce to move in with foster parents. Flash forward 30 years later to Berkeley, where Bruce (Eric Bana) has also become a geneticist, coincidentally partnering with Ross' daughter Betty (Jennifer Connelly), not knowing about the whereabouts of his parents or any memories of them. A freak accident involving gamma radiation activates the altered genes inside Bruce and he becomes the Hulk. Ross (Sam Elliott) is now forced to stop the Hulk by any means necessary while David (Nick Nolte) tries to re-establish contact with his son after 30 years of prison.

Lee and writing partner James Schamus seem to specialize in filming human interactions. They bring it here to the Hulk with uneven results. The story of Bruce's origins and the constant tries to remember his past bog down the entire movie and make it tediously long. We all come to see The Hulk, but have to sit through a good hour of dialogue to get to him. It comes to a point where they're just stretching the material all the way it can be, making the audience wonder why we should care about the subject altogether and get to the more exciting things the Hulk could be doing. Lee's presentation of the long material is innovative but wasted. He uses multiple cameras to capture the same scene at multiple angles, a la 24, and putting them in as if we're moving from panel to panel in a comic book. Sure, it was nice to see and all, but 24 uses this technique to its advantage by looking at different locales at the same time while Lee confines it to two or three different shots of the same subject. If there is any saving grace to the film, it's in the action. As long as you don't see the Hulk close-up to recognize how fake he is (the fish in Finding Nemo seem more real), it's pretty cool to see him taking bullets, evading helicopters, or jumping from mountain to mountain. But that's only 30 minutes out of a 138 minute movie. 2 stars