It's Not Easy Being Green
Can a Philosophical Hulk Make a Smash?

Being a geek occasionally causes me to slant my movie reviews. Case in point: while I should be giving Hulk high marks for being an intelligent, thought-provoking film in the midst of an onslaught of mindless summer fare, I find myself pouting because it was not the kind of comic-book film that I wanted to see. This is not the same lighthearted style as last year's Spider-Man or this year's action-packed X2. This is something different.

Ang Lee (director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) has taken the core of the Hulk mythos and explored the characters in a way that no other director would have managed to do. For those who never read the comic book or watched the Bill Bixby television series, don't worry. Lee starts from scratch and rewrites the Hulk as a cautionary tale of genetic manipulation and sins of fathers being visited upon their children. If this sounds a little heady for a comic book movie, you're right.

The story, retold from the beginning, concerns a military scientist named David Banner who (after being denied human test subjects) decides to experiment on his own body with a serum that would supposedly make him stronger and more resistant to illness. When his wife becomes pregnant, David sees the fruits of his experiment in his son Bruce. But when Banner's funding is cut off by a military man named Ross, he destroys his lab and returns home to his family.

Flash-forward to the present day. Bruce (Eric Bana) is working in a research lab, using "nanomeds" to speed healing in animal test subjects. Bruce has also just been dumped by his girlfriend and co-worker Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly). Little does Bruce know that the miracle they hope to find is swimming around in his blood. Nor does he suspect that his supposedly dead father (Nick Nolte) is watching him.

Of course, it will come as no surprise to anyone that after an accidental overdose of gamma radiation, Bruce begins to experience some strange side effects. When he gets angry, he starts change into a giant muscle-bound brute. Soon everyone is after Banner for various reasons. The people at a research lab want to examine him (posthumously, if necessary). The military want to lock him up and study him. And Bruce's father is trying to discover a way to trigger the same mutation in himself.

While many would merely turn Hulk into a summer special effects-laden bonanza, Lee treats the comic book material with a reverence that usually reserved for great literature. Peeling the layers of the story and characters, he searches for the universal truths that this modern Frankenstein story has to tell. While the original comic book was very much a warning about the dangers of radiation, the film concerns itself with the current hot topic of genetic manipulation.

But Lee doesn't stop there. He also breaks down the plot into stories about fathers and children and the gaps between the generations. In Bruce's case, his very nature has been redesigned by his father. For Betty Ross, her relationship with her father -- General "Thunderbolt" Ross (Sam Elliott) -- has been strained for years because of his need to put duty ahead of his daughter.

The downside to this great storytelling is that Hulk becomes very windy. The back story takes nearly half an hour to tell before the title character appears in all his green glory. At the climax of the film, a long discussion between father and son nearly halts the momentum (and credibility) of the story. More surprising, the tantalizing teasers that suggest that Bruce actually may like turning into the Hulk are not really explored.

Despite what critics and fans have said prior to the film's release, I thought the computer graphics were astounding. The Hulk looks as real as can be expected for a green guy with muscles bulging everywhere. The expressions on the Hulk's face are filled with emotion, and some of the best moments in the film come when the audience connects with the monster for a moment and see him as a creature to be sympathized with, even pitied.

If there is anything that comes across as artificial, it would be Bana's acting. At no time does Bruce exhibit any emotion, yet he never comes across as a socially-dysfunctional scientist (like an absent-minded professor). He merely seems wooden because he never shows any emotion, happiness or sadness, nor displays his displeasure with Betty in even a passive-aggressive manner.

Overall, I liked Hulk and will definitely own it when it comes out on DVD. It's one of the best comic book movies ever produced. It's not wall-to-wall action. It also doesn't have the most satisfying ending. But it does do something that is rare, it treats a comic book as a serious story. For that reason, I truly admire what Ang Lee has done.

MY RATING: 8 out of 10.

RATED: PG-13
RUN TIME: 138 min.