I’m always worried walking into a theater to see a comic book-based movie. I’m always worried that these film studios are going to take a great, legendary comic book and turn it into a horrible movie. Good knows there have been plenty of them. But I was proven wrong in 2000 with the first X-Men movie, then again two years later with Spider-Man. Then again this year with X2: X-Men United and surprisingly Daredevil. Then again, maybe I’m just easy to please. Never the less, that didn’t stop me from being worried more than ever walking into The Hulk.
Was, I proved wrong again? Well, almost. While I did like this movie, I was disappointed. I was disappointed by a couple of things. But I’ll get to those in just a bit.
I’ll give you a quick rundown of the movie’s premise. Eric Bana (2001’s Black Hawk Down) stars as Bruce Banner. He is a geneticist, who as a child was injected by his father, Nick Nolte (2002’s The Good Thief) who was also a geneticist, with genetically coded DNA fast forward years later Bruce, who was put up for adoption and doesn’t remember anything about his childhood, it working in a lab with Betty Ross played by Jennifer Connelly (2001’s A Beautiful Mind). An accident happens and he is exposed to gamma rays. These gamma rays trigger the altered DNA and when he is under emotional or physical stress he turns into the big green monster known as The Hulk. And then his father comes back into his life, but for all the wrong reasons.
Directed by Ang Lee (2001’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), The Hulk does a beautiful job of taking the comic book feel and incorporating it into the movie. By this, I mean the picture-in-picture type of story telling, having more than one thing going on in the scene. He also makes it into more than just a comic book movie, by turning it into almost a psychological drama. I must say, I don’t have a damn clue why people say that Hulk looked too cartoonish. I though the CGI hulk looked great. And Probably better than one could have even hoped for. I believe, and many people will probably agree with me that the Hulk looked better during the day and close up, rather then during the night and from a distance. Most of the actors in the movie, especially Jennifer Connelly did a great job with their characters. The only actor that I think was a bit cheesy and unbelievable was Talbot played by Josh Lucas. To me, the script in some parts seemed a bit unorganized, Some of the fight scenes were way too dark (the Hulk Dog scene and the final confrontation with Bruce’s father), and the ending pretty much all but sucked in my opinion. I won't tell what happens though.
So when it comes down to it The Hulk was good comic book movie, but not a great one, and was not the best by far. But I would recommend it to anyone. I was an entertaining movie, and definitely not what you would expect it to be. |
