Dir.
Ang Lee, 2003, USA, 138 mins
Cast:
Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott
Taiwanese director Ang Lee is anything but type-cast. One of cinema's greatest visual artists, he turns his attentions to the block-buster market with surprisingly stylish results in The Hulk - the latest Marvel comic to be given a big screen makeover.
Lee has been responsible for some of the great movies of recent years including the period drama Sense And Sensibility, civil war epic Ride With The Devil and, most notably, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Yet his decision to take on the summer market raised a few eyebrows - particularly when early trailers revealed The Hulk to be a digital creation that looked decidedly dodgy. There was a very real fear that Lee had created the wrong type of monster and that audiences would be the ones to get angry.
However, now the green giant has finally arrived it has revealed itself to be quite a creation - a blockbuster which delivers the wow factor while working on an emotional level. It's a big budget movie that could well appeal to the art-house crowd as well.
Hulk functions as much as a tragedy as it does a full-on crowd pleaser. It takes one man's struggle to find a place for himself in the world while understanding what has happened and turns it into a genuinely affecting emotional tussle. Eric Bana stars as the quiet, sensitive research scientist Bruce Banner who absorbs a normally deadly dose of gamma radiation during an explosive lab accident. As a result of his courage Banner begins to experience side effects, developing a super human anger that sees him transform into a giant green man-beast known as The Hulk.
This creature courts the attention of the military led by the father (Sam Elliot, ironically also called the Hulk during his wrestling profession) of Banner's ex-girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly).
While the army seeks to harness this temper for its own ends, Banner struggles to understand and contain it, drawing on the support of his estranged father (Nick Nolte) in a bid to end his personal torment.
The ensuing battle of wits makes for engrossing viewing and it is credit to Lee that the special effects merely serve to enhance, rather than detract, from the human emotion involved.
Though more serious than the likes of Spider-Man and rivalling Tim Burton's Batman in the darkness stakes, Hulk still retains a sense of fun and provides a visual feast including the split screen sequences as seen in the original TV series.
And while several of the support players may feel under-used (most notably Josh Lucas's love-rival) the four-way tussle betweens its central protagonists plays up to the strengths of its cast with Nolte revelling in his role as The Hulk's mad father/creator.
The special effects look amazing throughout and it contains a nice line in humour, though more ironic than outright funny, with TV's Hulk Lou Ferrigno blink-and-you-miss-it cameo role. Big budget fun!
Shizana Arshad |
