Review: Hulk, The (2003)
Steve Rhodes
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2003 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
Save your popcorn money, kids. THE HULK is no SPIDER-MAN. Whereas Sam Raimi's
SPIDER-MAN was lively and fun, Ang Lee's THE HULK is slow and ponderous. A
think piece more than an action film, it is a pretentious picture that takes
itself way too seriously. Like the Hulk, the film is bulked up. Buried deep
within it is a great hour-and-a-half movie that is dying to get out. And
speaking of dying, you're going to be pretty tired by the time it's over. When
an epilogue, which serves as the trailer for HULK 2, starts off with "One Year
Later," you'll swear that you've been watching the movie in real-time, since its
almost two and a half hours feel like an entire year.
Eric Bana, who showed such frighteningly explosive energy in CHOPPER, might seem
to be an excellent choice to play Bruce Banner, the super hero HULK's alter ego.
But Lee so emasculates Bana that he becomes a zero, an uninteresting nerd whose
only purpose is be transformed into a big green CGI monster called THE HULK.
Consistently terrific, Jennifer Connelly plays Betty Ross, Bruce's lab partner
and girlfriend. Connelly and the green monster have genuine chemistry together,
but Connelly and Bana never do, no matter how hard they try, and everyone in
this movie tries hard, way too hard.
In the trying hard department, the king is Nick Nolte, who plays Bruce's evil
father. Nolte is an actor with a proclivity for overacting unless firmly
directed to do otherwise. Lee encourages everything that is bad about Nolte's
acting, which is a shame since Nolte can be so wonderful if properly directed.
Nolte's acting is so over the top that it is almost laughably bad.
The story starts off intriguingly, helped enormously by Danny Elfman's
brilliantly evocative score, but the movie keeps getting bogged down in long,
laborious scenes of no real import. As much as Lee seems to want to be making
the next GANDHI, he really should be shooting for something with more of a comic
book feel.
If you do go, and most people between the ages of 12 and 24 probably will, save
yourself an hour. Just show up an hour late. You'll enjoy the movie just as
much and probably more than the viewers who had to wait that long for anything
to happen.
THE HULK runs 2:20. It is rated PG-13 for "sci-fi action violence, some
disturbing images and brief partial nudity" and would be acceptable for kids
around 12 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, June 20, 2003. In the
Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC and the Century theaters.
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