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Review: The Hulk By Radar, (DT) June 21, 2003 8:51 AM PT

Like a lot of people, I was prepared to roll my eyes at The Hulk. ?From the trailer it looked like a computer game laid over a movie. ?The movements and look of the CGI Hulk didn?t look like anything that couldn?t be done with a joystick and ?whatever is the latest game box. ?But the trailer shows the only the most unbelievable Hulk stunts. ?Like covering miles of desert in a single sproingy leap and swinging an Abrams tank around by the barrel and letting it fly. ?The trailer invites skepticism. ? In the film, the deft writing of James Schamus places the creature in the context of fully developed characters and a story comprising age-old motivations and conflicts. ?It is, essentially, a classical tragedy. ?We don?t actually see his Greenness in daylight until almost a third of the way through a fairly long movie. ?The first third is spent developing the back story of the Banner family and Bruce Banner?s past relationship with his co-researcher, Betty (Jennifer Conelly). ?When the Hulk does make his green debut, it is in shadow and dimness. ?By the time we see him in the light of day, we?re used to him?he?s the big, green guy. ? ? It?s not visual verisimilitude that suspends disbelief, good writing does that. ?King Kong on the Empire State Building, swatting at biplanes, doesn?t even come close to looking real, but Kong?s tragic pathos fills us and the Hulk comes close to matching it. ?Of course the Hulk doesn?t look real. ?He?s a giant green monster. ?Gollum and the ?bullet-time? sequences in the Matrix don?t look real either. ?Actually the Hulk doesn?t look any more artificial than the make-up on Sam Elliot, who, playing a four star general and nemesis of Bruce Banner?s mad scientist father, still seems like a refugee from a made-for-TV western. ?Nolte plays the senior Banner to the hilt, maybe a little beyond the hilt sometimes. ?He is in danger of being type cast as anything with the word ?mad? in its name. In spite of all the debate over the appearance of the beast himself, the film looks great?like a well-drawn comic, its frames are tightly composed around quirky close-ups and alienating long shots. ?Editor Tim Squyres moves fluidly through scenes and the usually intrusive transitional devices like wipes and fades make perfect sense and, although the cubist perspectives add little or nothing to the plot, keep the film firmly anchored in comicland. ?Using standard comic composition techniques, director Ang Lee seems to be saying to the audience: this is an adaptation of a comic book, for crying out loud. ?And he?s right, if you can?t see it for what it is, it will certainly disappoint. And it will be a long disappointment because this is one leisurely film. ?It never drags, and it seems less than its 138 minute running time, but it never hurries as it builds the characters and the story. ?And it sets up nicely for a sequel as well. ?There is no need to rush if you know your working on a trilogy, which seems to be the current standard for big action movies. It is in the telegraphing of the sequel that the film fails. ?Where it could have been tragic, had its end reached a final and honest conclusion, it sets up hope and optimism, anticipation of another chance for Bruce Banner to find a cure to unchain himself from the beast that rages within. ?This is presumably good for Bruce, but bad for the film. ?For tragedy to work, it must be moving toward a final conclusion, an inevitable and, of course, tragic end. ? The wages of sin must be paid, even unfair ones, even those of the father visited upon the son. Irony and humor are strikingly absent. ?It?s not as if the film takes itself too seriously?it?s not, like the Matrix, pretentious or overbearing in its message?it?s more like the makers were so absorbed with film craft CGI work that they didn?t have time for fun. ?Now, anytime you?re spending $150 million of someone else?s money it?s serious business, and by all accounts Lee and the rest of the crew worked long and hard on The Hulk. ?Perhaps its greatest shortcoming is that all that hard work shows.