THE INCREDIBLE HULK
(Review)

Following an opening credits sequence that quickly and firmly establishes this as reboot more than straight-up continuation of Ang Lee’s flawed Hulk, Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk finds the on-the-run Bruce Banner (this time played by Edward Norton) hiding out in Brazil.
Doing his darnedest to learn the language and keep his head down, he works at a bottling factory while simultaneously learning to control his anger and exploring avenues to purge himself of the not-very-jolly green giant that lurks inside him.
It’s an interesting way to kick-start this pseudo-sequel, with a very conscious nod to the character’s 70’s TV incarnation (likewise titled The Incredible Hulk), which followed the episodic template of Banner in a new town, hiding out, working some odd job or other, till some occurrence would trigger the Hulk’s emergence, and the poor man would need to uproot himself once more, till he found a new place to hang his hat 7 days later.
Acknowledging the contribution the TV show has had on the public’s awareness of the character is one of the things The Incredible Hulk gets right. In fact, the script by Zak Penn (subsequently re-tooled by Norton) seems designed to have something for everyone: that opening act for the TV fans; the romantic angle—with Liv Tyler taking over for Jennifer Connelly—for the drama enthusiasts; the repeated clashes with Emil Blonsky/the Abomination—played by Tim Roth—for the comic book fanboys.
In this, and some other aspects, The Incredible Hulk plays much better than Lee’s effort. That, however, doesn’t make it a complete success.

To its credit, the film’s main players are very nearly a solid bunch.
To begin with, Norton makes a more credible Banner than Eric Bana. Bana’s an excellent actor, don’t get me wrong, but his more conventional silver screen good looks made his take on the character seem less tortured somehow, less the character from the comic books rather than a Hollywood version of that character.
Norton’s Banner, on the other hand, seems to hearken back, not just to the comic book scientist dealt a cruel hand by fate, but again, also to the Bill Bixby TV version of the character, the eternal wanderer both out of his depth and out of place, trying to regain the peace of mind and heart that the gamma poisoning has taken away from him.
And while William Hurt makes for a passably effective—if not overwhelmingly memorable—General Ross, Tim Roth manages to make a practically one-dimensional antagonist something worth watching.

But even as Roth (and Norton, for that matter) can usually be depended upon to bring the thespic goods to the screen, Liv Tyler can sometimes be one of a film’s weak cast links; see Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Thankfully, here, she delivers just enough of what the script and role demand of her to make her Betty credible as Banner’s long-suffering true love.
Most valuable supporting player though, goes without a doubt, to Tim Blake Nelson, whose Samuel Sterns is cut from the excitable, unstable genius cloth, and who we can only hope will—should The Incredible Hulk make some green at the box office—be seen more of in a sequel (or in that seemingly impending Avengers movie).
Ty Burrell (from the Dawn of the Dead remake and the recently cancelled Back To You) though, just seems like an odd choice for Doc Samson, who we see only enough of to establish him as the man with the thankless task of having kept Betty’s heart warm while she waited for her true love to come back into her life. (And trying to imagine how Burrell will essay Samson if and when his hair should turn green somewhere down the road seems even odder…)

Now, while Lee’s Hulk took one step forward by couching the established four-colour mythos in the emotional complexity he always brings to his films, he also took it two steps backward by choosing to shoot and edit the film as if it were, in fact, a comic book movie.
What I ended up seeing was a schizophrenic film that strove to make the characters real and three-dimensional, while constantly reminding me of the source material’s two-dimensional pulp origins. It seemed to yearn to transcend the material, but at the same time displayed a superficial—and ultimately distracting—fascination with the comic medium’s narrative conventions.
Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk though, clearly embraces its comic book (and television) origins, while striving to bring to the fore the romantic relationship that has always been part and parcel of Bruce Banner’s story. It also wisely curbs any over-reaching ambitions, steering clear of the cluttered narrative landscapes of Marvel entries like Spider-Man 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand.

So, despite the film’s rhythm being less than ideal (some sequences—yes, even some of the action pieces—drag a bit), and its CGI still not quite achieving entirely realistic and convincing levels, this arguably makes for better viewing than Lee’s Hulk.
It’s also most definitely better than some of the other past Marvel cinematic fare, like Ghost Rider and Elektra, so if only for that, Marvel should be commended.
Now if only they learn to be circumspect, and not jump the gun while in the heady wake of Iron Man’s box office success (that terribly premature announcement of a 2010-2011 schedule is most definitely not being circumspect), then they stand a better chance of keeping this winning streak going.

Parting shot: Reviews of some other Marvel comic book films—including Ghost Rider, Elektra, and the Fantastic Four movies—can be found in the Archive, where reviews of Leterrier’s Danny the Dog and the Zak Penn-written Suspect Zero are also ensconced.

(The Incredible Hulk OS [design by Crew Creative Advertising] courtesy of impawards.com.)

reVIEW (7)
DANNY THE DOG (aka UNLEASHED)

With Louis Leterrier at the helm of the Hulk sequel, I thought, hey, let’s let Danny The Dog out for a walk. After all, it’s been awhile since the little dude’s been out of his cage…

We all know Jet Li kicks serious butt.
In 2002, he worked with renowned director Zhang Yimou on Ying Xiong (Hero), arguably the thinking man’s martial arts film. In 2005, Li reunited with his Kiss of the Dragon writer/producer Luc Besson (best known for directing the high-octane actioneers, Leon and La Femme Nikita, as well as the gonzo science-fiction epic, The Fifth Element), in Louis Leterrier’s Danny The Dog (internationally known as Unleashed), another wire-fu flick with a difference.

This time out, he shares screen time with Oscar alumni Morgan Freeman (who won for Million Dollar Baby) and Bob Hoskins (nominated for Mona Lisa), to tell the tale of “Danny the Dog,” a man with the soul and spirit of a child, conditioned to have the cold beating heart of a brutal fighter when the collar he is forced to wear is taken off him.
And when fate conspires to take the ruthless Bart (Hoskins) out of Danny’s life, the man-child comes into the care of Sam (Freeman), a blind piano tuner who lives with his stepdaughter Victoria (Kerry Condon, of Ned Kelly and Angela’s Ashes). Sam and Victoria, with their kindness and warmth, begin to deconstruct Danny the Dog, teaching him how to be human, as well as the meaning of family.

Described like that, Danny The Dog sounds curiously like Lilo & Stitch; that is, if Lilo & Stitch had fight scenes choreographed by the Master himself, Yuen Wo Ping (whose Hollywood credits include The Matrix trilogy and the Kill Bill saga). So fear not, action junkies, Danny The Dog doesn’t get all Bicentennial Man on us. What it does though, is present us with a curious paradox.

Like Hero before it, Danny The Dog is a film that puts martial arts squarely at its center, but at the same time has a strong anti-violence (and, in Hero’s particular case, anti-war) stance. But, like Danny, we the audience, have been conditioned to associate Jet Li with serious butt-kicking. Thus, there are times when Danny The Dog seems to be at odds with itself. Violence is equated with dehumanization; that we would be no better than wild dogs if we resorted to guns and knives and fists. What then about the audience member who has unabashedly come into Danny The Dog relishing with anticipation the fancy moves and high-flying kicks Jet Li is sure to amaze us with?
Presumably, we are supposed to take stock of ourselves, of our own innate fascination with the cinema of violence. Yet, unlike Hero, that aspect of Danny The Dog doesn’t quite work as well. Hoskin’s Bart is a little too cartoony, and the story’s resolution a little too pat, to make the integrity of the whole as solid as it could have been.

While Leterrier’s direction is adequate (Leterrier co-directed The Transporter with Corey Yuen, and flew solo on the sequel), ultimately, it’s the script by Besson that doesn’t deliver the goods.
We are made to hear the presumably strong filial bonds shared by Sam and Victoria through lines of dialogue by Freeman, without really being allowed to feel that bond through specific plot situations. And though scenes between Li and Freeman—in which Sam teaches Danny how to shop and cook—are effective, they aren’t enough to capture the feeling of family.
On another note, though I love Massive Attack, I feel their brand of music may be a wee bit laid back, compared to the hard-driving techno cuts that have become the standard soundtrack to films of this sort. (Which was, perhaps, the point, but somehow, Massive Attack’s score just didn’t work for me.)

If, however, you’re in it simply for the butt-kicking, then Danny The Dog delivers on that score. This is, after all, Jet Li. And though some of Li’s past films have been more creative in their choreography, there is still some solid wire-fu fun to be had here.
Still, if Besson had spent a little more time teaching the proverbial old dog its new tricks, if he had worked harder to subvert the wire-fu film (and, by extension, the cinema of violence), much as Sam and Victoria deconstruct Danny, Danny The Dog could have turned out to be much more substantial than it actually is.

(The above review began life under the name, “Deconstructing Danny (Teaching An Old Dog…).”)

(Danny The Dog and Unleashed OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)