I wanted to like The Incredible Hulk as much as Ang Lee's Hulk. It would have been great to have another franchise to root for again. Sadly, I don't think I can feel the same about The Incredible Hulk, despite all my trying.
The Incredible Hulk starts off at a brisk pace, rocketing through the revised origin in the credit sequence. I think this is the first failing of the movie, as it isn't so much an adaptation of the Hulk comics as it is an adaptation of the Hulk TV show. And as much as I enjoyed "The Incredible Hulk" on TV when I was a child, it wasn't very good and definitely wasn't smart. So, we springboard off that silly 70's idea and through some gamma pulse bullshit that makes less sense than anything from the "talky" Ang Lee film that every fucking retard in the world bitches endlessly about, leaving us with Bruce Banner hiding out in Brazil, trying to find a cure for the monster within.
Though the pace is hyped up a bit, the movements of the film are fairly standard. Every so many minutes the Hulk shows up on screen and there's a satisfyingly destructive fight. It feels somewhat cookie-cutter and we grow a bit weary of it by the end.
The direction is, as usual, top notch from Louis Leterrier, though I feel that, in many ways, this is his least interesting film, falling behind the smooth and bright texture of The Transporter 2 and Unleashed. He does provide an excellent visual sense, a dead-on eye for action, and manages to draw good performances out of his actors, who all do a good job in their roles. Maybe you can't replace an actor like Sam Elliot with William Hurt and come out ahead, but Hurt does his damnedest and I was able to forget how much more I preferred Hulk's actors for the length of the movie. Sadly, Tim Roth feels awfully underused in his two-dimensional role, but that could be said for much of the movie, which is fairly malnourished in the writing department.
There isn't nearly enough emotion or pathos built into this iteration and you can feel it as it goes along for two hours. The Hulk itself lacks the spark of the last film's and seems to be more of a video game character than a creature bred on emotion and frustration, who could stand to appear disturbingly human at times instead of just flatly animal-like.
All-in-all, the reboot is less than satisfying, but will inevitably do well and please the more average movie-goer, who looks more forward to the Hulk tearing shit up than having a plot that doesn't feel desperately "comic booky".
