'Hulk' no longer lumbers

Five years ago, Ang Lee’s misbegotten version of Marvel Comics’ “Hulk” received poor reviews and disappointing, though still substantial, box office. (It remains Lee’s highest-grossing film, but it also cost as much as all his other features put together.) As a result, the producers are back with a kind of reboot — “The Incredible Hulk” — which takes place in a world where the earlier film’s events never happened.

Usually I praise producers for not playing it safe, for turning over a major property to a strong director rather than a reliable hack. It was extraordinary, for instance, that Warner placed its ailing but valuable Batman franchise in the hands of Christopher Nolan, whose main claim to fame was the cerebral, dizzyingly complicated “Memento.”

In that case, the decision was vindicated. Not so with Lee and “Hulk.” With one buttock planted in its comic-book roots and the other in deeper psychological concerns, Lee’s take ended up falling on its keister between the two. (Amazingly, Lee regards “Hulk” as “probably my most personal film”— which was very likely the source of the problem.)

So this time Marvel and Universal have taken the standard route by hiring director Louis Leterrier, a graduate of the Luc Besson action-film factory, whose previous credits are Jet Li’s “Unleashed” and the two “Transporter” movies. It’s doubtful that Leterrier will ever make something as great as “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” or “Brokeback Mountain,” but he’s still come up with a more satisfying Hulk film than Lee did.

After an opening credit sequence that condenses the entire back story into a rapid-fire three-minute montage, we meet Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) as a reclusive worker in a Brazilian bottling factory. (It’s not clear where he got the money to equip his rundown favela flat with a working laptop computer and wireless equipment.) After General Ross (William Hurt) gets wind of his location, Banner flees in a breathtaking urban chase. (Cyril Raffaelli, who starred in and choreographed the Besson production “District B13,” is credited as “parkour coordinator,” presumably for this sequence.)

In the end, Banner only escapes because he transforms into the Hulk — which is where the problems begin. The Hulk is, of course, a CGI creation, a cartoon; emotionally, we never think of him as Banner. So, whenever Norton is replaced by this towering green heap of pixels, the excitement becomes way less moving. It’s like in the “Transformers”: Why should we care about a slugfest between two patently artificial beings? When Bill Bixby used to turn into Lou Ferrigno on TV, it was Ferrigno’s humanness that engaged us. (Ferrigno has a cameo here, as he did in the 2003 film, as a security guard; he and Stan Lee, in another cameo, appear to be the only returning cast members. This time, Ferrigno is also credited with the Hulk’s voice.)

Maybe the whole affair is supposed to be a metaphorical indictment of steroid abuse. The movie’s climax is a giant battle between Hulk and Blonsky (Tim Roth), a soldier who has undergone a Hulk-like treatment and turned into a grotesque dinosaur/lizard/Hulkish thing.
At the same time, Hulk doesn’t look brutish enough; facially, he resembles Jason Scott Lee or maybe Chad Everett. He’s frankly, well, more handsome than Norton.

Despite the problems, “The Incredible Hulk” is a satisfying thrill ride. There are some witty bits, and the whole thing moves swiftly. (It’s thankfully about
25 minutes shorter than the earlier film.)

One final note: The film’s final joke has Robert Downey Jr. showing up as Tony Stark/Iron Man. Normally, I wouldn’t want to spoil an amusing surprise, but Universal itself has made this scene a centerpiece of its TV commercials, so there’s nothing to spoil. More importantly, the ads are totally misleading, making it look as though Downey is actually in the film. OK, he is in the film ... for a total of about 30 seconds, 29 or so of which are included in the ad. So Downey fans shouldn’t be fooled by the ad into buying tickets; they’ve already seen his entire performance.