.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

In 2003, Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee took on the Marvel comic giant, The Hulk starring Eric Bana in the Bruce Banner/Hulk role. The movie opened large, then died a death of shame thanks to critics and audiences not appreciating Lee's highbrow approach to bringing the colored page to the big screen.

Although talks of a sequel were bantered about for years, the fact that The Hulk was expected to crush the competition and was only able to cover its production costs domestically (when worldwide receipts were counted, the studio did make money), made the notion of a repeat visit, as Spock would say, "Illogical".

But hold the gamma rays! Somehow. Someway. Something happened. Maybe it was the fact that Marvel comic characters were making fists of money for their studios. Even bad films like The Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider were raking in dough. Maybe it was Marvel who now has controlling rights over their movies and wanted to etch-a-sketch out the 2003 version and start anew. Or maybe it was that A-List actor Edward Norton attached himself to the project to play the Banner/Hulk role.

Whatever the reasons, the Hulk is back in the cleverly named, The Incredible Hulk and comparisons aside to its predecessor, this one is actually quite good. We pick up Bruce Banner (Norton) as he is hiding out in Brazil. He has gone a few months 'without incident' and continues in his struggle to find a cure to affliction that turns him into a big, green, mammoth of a creature whenever he gets angry or his heart starts beating rapidly in excitement (a funny scene of an attempted sexual encounter is cut short thanks to his worries of hulking while honking).

Thanks to clever flashbacks, we see how Banner became the Hulk as part of a government experiment and why General Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) is so hell bent on bringing Bruce back into the fold - dead or alive. Through the flashbacks, we are introduced to Betty Ross (Liv Tyler), who in a white lab coat looked almost as credible as Liz Shue and Denise Richards did in The Saint and The World is Not Enough respectively.

So while Bruce looks for a cure while trying with very little effort to stay out of the path of Betty, an army officer named Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) opts to have his body injected with the same chemicals that make hulk, well, HULK.

Too bad for Emil that while the Hulk can almost look cute when tame, when Emil turns, he becomes The Abomination - a creature so large and hideous that Godzilla wouldn't want to mate with it.

Like any good superhero film, the plot is quick to confront Hulk and The Abomination and their battles through the streets of New York (ok, it's Toronto made to look like New York), and atop a building in the city are heart pumping adrenaline rushes.

A film that relies upon the realism of the CGI created main character and the action sequences to which he is involved is only as good as the things that go BOOM during the viewing. The Incredible Hulk has plenty of BOOM.

The first action sequence which takes place in a Brazilian bottling plant has the Hulk hidden in the dark shadows of the dimly lit warehouse. But when the Hulk is engaged on a University Campus, we get everything from army trucks being ripped apart to helicopters crashing from the sky. And this all occurs before the true villain of the film shows his gruesome mug.

Once The Abomination comes into being, the action rolls like barrels in a game of Donkey Kong. People are collateral damage as cars, buildings and anything else these two behemoths can get their oversized hands on are thrust through the air like used Kleenex. And when these two beasts go head-to-head and fist-to-fist, we are witness to one of the better filmed action fight sequences between two computer generated characters that has ever been put on digital film.

Written by Zac Penn who was the Penn behind the pen for such other superhero films as Elektra and X-Men 2 and 3, The Incredible Hulk is not rocket science when it comes to the script. As Iron Man provided more character development, The Incredible Hulk can only plod along due to a lead character that is about as articulate as my dog, Stormy.

But where The Fantastic Four storylines and dialogue were almost laughable, The Incredible Hulk does a good job of positioning eye popping action sequences around it's predictable cardboard storyline.

The Incredible Hulk might not be 'Incredible', but for summer fare, it was much better than Indiana Jones and should hold up well with comedies now taking over the release schedule for at least another week (The Love Guru and Get Smart).

So the advice is simple. If you see just one action superhero movie this summer, see Iron Man. If you have room for two, you won't be disappointed with The Incredible Hulk either.