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Imagine growing up and never expressing your emotions. The hurts you wouldn’t cry over, the excitements you never cheered about, and the loves you had but never shared your true feelings. Your body would be a pent-up volcano, waiting to erupt. Now imagine that you grow up to become a brilliant scientist like your father before you.
Working in the lab allows you limited human contact, and your detachment allows for pure objectivity. Now imagine that you’re working on an experiment and something goes wrong. A fellow scientist is trapped in a room that’s about to expose him to lethal levels of radiation. Your survival instinct kicks in as you run in to rescue your friend.
Unable to free him, you throw yourself in front of the machine. At the zero second, your body is bathed in the full blast of radiation.
Three weeks later, you come out of the coma, and there are no signs of damage. Everybody, including you, is amazed by the phenomenon. That night, you’re lying in bed, and you feel yourself start to shake and tremble. Your mind starts to fade, and the Pandora’s Box of your emotions is released. Your body transforms into a seven-foot, two-thousand-pound green Hulk.
This is the general plot for one of the best comic book movies of the summer. As you watch the movie, you’ll learn more about the reason why Bruce Banner (played by Eric Bana) survived that radiation blast. You’ll also discover that the Hulk is not the raging beast everybody assumes him to be.
In a summer filled with comic adaptations or comic-influenced films (see X-Men 2, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and The Matrix Reloaded), director Ang Lee has managed to create a movie that raises the bar for this genre/tradition. Without giving away visual secrets, it can be said that the cinematography, color choices, and editing were stunning and truly impressive.
The technical aspects of the film were not the only thing worthy of praise. The casting director must be given recognition for choosing Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Nick Nolte, and Sam Elliot in their respective roles. Being a comic book film, it would have been easy to provide caricature portrayals, but none of the actors did that.
You can see and sense the pain and emotions that Bana is repressing as Bruce Banner -- and those are the triggers for the Hulk’s appearance. It also allows the audience to sympathize with him when the rage and transformation occurs, because the Hulk never tries to actually hurt anybody.
The animosity and aggression felt between General Ross (as played by Elliot) and David Banner (as played by Nolte) is fierce and completely believable. Both characters have their reason for the pure hatred, and that hatred bleeds over to their offspring. Again, not to give away plot points, the viewer should know danger falls upon the children of Banner and Ross (those children being Bruce and Betty).
Jennifer Connelly shows the same gentle strength seen in her performance in A Beautiful Mind. She doesn’t play Betty Ross as headstrong, but her love, affection, and nurturing nature for Bruce Banner is moving.
Hulk is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. I highly recommend it, and I may even go see it one or two more times this summer.
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