Bruce Banner: Eric Bana
Betty Ross: Jennifer Connelly
Father: Nick Nolte
Ross: Sam Elliott
Young David Banner: Paul Kersey
2 June 2003
by Jasmine Park
The most memorable moment in Ang Lee's latest movie, Hulk, comes towards the end, when the hero battles the enormous electric storm that his father (endowed with his own superpowers) has become. They fight against a night sky, and we see the outline of the Hulk frozen in electric light, thrown from cloud to cloud. The scene recalls the sublime ending of Lee's last work, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), where the heroine floats among the clouds and delicately vanishes; both are visions of intense abstract beauty, and Lee should be commended if only for bringing such artistry to the arena of the big-budget, comic-book Hollywood flick.
The film begins with the most memorable opening credit sequence since Panic Room (2002) - through the clever use of familiar comic book visuals, it depicts a mad scientist hard at work on a mysterious biological experiment. They foreshadow the very busy film editing that follows; Lee appears so intent on remaining true to the film's roots that Hulk recreates the multi-frame narrative style of comic books. (The technique starts to wear quickly but is quite effective in a number of scenes throughout the film.) After having his laboratory shut down by the military, the young scientist, David Banner (Paul Kersey), continues testing his experiments on himself and eventually passes damaged DNA on to his newborn son. After both his parents are presumably killed, the boy is adopted and grows up to become the present-day Bruce Banner (Eric Bana), who has unwittingly followed in his father's footsteps as a genetic scientist. It quickly becomes apparent that Bruce has some serious emotional issues and was recently jilted by his lab partner, Betty Ross (the intensely lovely Jennifer Connelly), in spite of the obvious chemistry the two still share. Further complications arise when Bruce has a bad run-in with a nuclear reactor that awakens his dormant defects, and his father (played by an unforgivably disheveled Nick Nolte), long-jailed but recently released, suddenly appears and urges his son to fulfill his genetic destiny. The Hulk's superpowers are soon unleashed, and the latter half of the film concerns the government's attempt to use the Hulk for military gain, headed by Betty's father, an Army general (Sam Elliott).
Rather than focusing on the sexual overtones of his subject, Lee instead hones in on the more innocent psychological complexities of the parent-child relationship that are familiar to his repertoire. In addition to having megalomaniacal fathers, Betty and Bruce realize that they were also brought up on the same Army base, and in one gorgeous sequence, they return to the long since deserted base and wander about dusty playgrounds and homes ruminating on their pasts. Not since Tim Burton brought his gothic vision to Batman has a Hollywood film tried this hard to coax fine drama from the pages of comic books.
This is not to say that Hulk is without its shortcomings, some of them quite blatant. The film runs too long in several action sequences, including the battle between the Hulk and his father's pumped-up poodles, which is shot and edited in almost complete darkness. There is also the downright laughable scene in which Bruce's father confronts him in a shadowy hanger as the military men look on - it is the worst of several moments when Nolte brings the movie to a screeching halt with his grandiloquent ranting that comes off as a particularly bad "Inside the Actor's Studio" lesson.
Many have also faulted the film's shortcomings in the special effects department, especially since The Lord of the Rings trilogy raised the stakes for all future CGI characters; the monstrous Hulk, with his exaggerated, ripply muscles and puzzling ability to keep his pants intact in spite of growing exponentially huge, is no match for the deservedly lauded Gollum. Yet the Hulk's rendering is no more objectionable than the special effects of the loathsome Spiderman (2001), to which Hulk is far superior. Never once was I exhilarated by the synthetic high-flying of that joke of a movie; at least Hulk challenges the emotional range of its subject - and has the good taste to select the smoldering Jennifer Connelly as a love interest, rather than the vacuous non-appeal of Kirsten Dunst. And the penultimate scene in which Connelly confesses her continued love for Bruce to her father is an admirable exercise in restraint, especially when compared to the similar but idiotically overdone final scene of Spiderman. I am always sympathetic to mainstream Hollywood productions that are not content with predictable mediocrity, and in a summer full of the same saccharine fare, Hulk is a welcome exception.
Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Ang Lee. Written by John Turman, Michael France, James Schamus, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Based on the story by James Schamus. Running time: 138 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sci-fi action violence, some disturbing images and brief partial nudity).
Eric Bana and Nick Nolte in Hulk.
Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross.
The Hulk terrorizes San Francisco.
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