Story: After five years in hiding, an on-the-run Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) heads back to Culver University, site of his gamma radiation poisoning, to gather data that may help him find a cure. His plan puts him in Betty's (Liv Tyler) path and gets General Ross' (William Hurt) attention. Ross brings Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) onto his team to help bring Bruce in and is so impressed that he decides it might be time to revive the ol' super solider experiment.Full disclosure: I never saw Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk. You no doubt already know that this movie isn't supposed to be particularly related to that one, although there are little bits here and there that suggest that having knowledge of the ins and outs of that movie wouldn't hurt. I've wanted to see the other version for some time now, especially given its latter day critical revival, but I've never quite gotten around to it. Now that I've seen this one, I just might.
Which isn't too say that this one is bad. It's not at all. I do wonder what kind of movie it would have been if Norton had been allowed to edit as well as do extensive, uncredited re-writes. Then he went a pitched what I now consider a classic Norton public pissy fit.* I suppose it's no different than an Alan Smithee film.
*He's the kind of guy that I like, but I wonder if he must difficult to get along with in real life. I don't mean to unfairly malign his character. He seems the it's-so-hard-to-be-this-smart sort, but I can't tell to what extent that comment should be sarcastic and to what extent it should be serious. Dude, maybe it is really hard to be Edward Norton.
I begrudge this movie for being so tight lipped. Banner's initial exposure, first Hulk attack, and subsequent life on the run are over and done with inside of an opening credits montage. We get a few snippets of exposition here and there, and it's obvious at several points that they are being deliberate obtuse in order to furnish further sequels. It wasn't even in the usual way, where something is left dangling shortly before the climax, and all of us who have seen a movie before know that that's going to be the basis of the sequel (although that happened as well), but several times in each of the acts did conversations and ideas worth exploring come to abrupt end instead of a conclusion. More true to life, I suppose, but this movie could have been improved by following even one of them through. Mostly I would one day like to know how Banner could be so stupid as to not realize what he was really working on and to test it on himself without having first tested it on, say, some sort of laboratory animal or similar.
Not that Norton makes Banner seem stupid. As Bruce, he's hemmed in on all sides by something he can't control and doesn't wish to, and Norton makes that play heartbreakingly without ever once being two-dimensional. Inside of Bruce is something that wants out, and he wants out of that contract, and neither one of them knows how to make that work.
Hurt is wonderfully gruff and arrogant as the General, and Roth makes a fantastic villain, largely because there's nothing all that villainous about Blonsky. He's a lifelong solider who wants to solider better. But it's really Tyler who shines as the fearless and devoted Dr. Elizabeth Ross. More so than anyone I've seen before, she creates a completely believable and touching relationship with mostly CGI creation. It's something other actors would do well to study.
Louis Leterrier's direction, while not particularly personalized, gets the job done. That's the movie in a nutshell. It gets the job done, doesn't screw anything up, and gives you more to go on in the future. Mind you, I could be biased because I'm pretty sure that anything with a Tony Stark cameo is going to look good to me. B
No comments:
Post a Comment