Video game violence, mayhem make 'Hulk' not so incredible

Hardly anyone liked Ang Lee's character-driven 2003 "Hulk" movie with Aussie star Eric Bana, so French action director Louis "The Transporter" Leterrier took over for this slam-bam, action-packed sequel that begs the question: Has the mere Hulk finally become incredible?

Close, but not quite.

Leterrier's sequel improves upon Lee's original by moving at the speed of a rocket-propelled grenade, by lobbing in some welcome humor and fan-boy references, and by capitalizing on Edward Norton's Jimmy Stewart-esque blend of vulnerability and empathy, a stark contrast from Bana's athletic coolness as Dr. Bruce Banner.

Yet, the title character himself, the green id monster that Banner turns into whenever he becomes really angry, comes off as a literal CGI cartoon, an unconvincingly artificial video game character tossed into a realistic world generated from Stan Lee's ultra-popular Marvel comics.

Leterrier directs the first half of "The Incredible Hulk" as a science-fiction mystery thriller. During the second half, Leterrier gives into the need for speed, action and violence, and buries the screen in Saturday morning cartoon antics with the Hulk and his new nemesis, the incredibly ugly Abomination, going at each other in a computer-animated King Kong vs. Godzilla slapdown as they take huge bites out of the Big Apple.

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This constant blur of mayhem and destruction might hold some brief fascination for 12-year-old boys on a "Transformers" video game fix, but it blunts the senses and undermines the promising start of a movie that never achieves the giddy heights of another, much better movie based on a Marvel Comics superhero, "Iron Man."

"The Incredible Hulk" begins with a rapid-fire montage over the opening credits that retraces the origins of the Hulk, this time with Norton being bathed by painful gamma rays that alter his blood, and creates within him his own inner, enraged child. Banner has relocated to South America where he works in obscurity at a soda bottling company. A single drop of blood from an accidental cut falls into a bottle. Shipped to America, the beverage gets consumed by Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee in a surprise cameo.

His subsequent gamma poisoning - let's not get too scientific here - alerts General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross (William Hurt, chewing the Kevlar in gray hair and a mustache) to Banner's location.

Ross has sworn to take down the green creature, no matter what, no matter that his own daughter, Dr. Betty Ross (the lifelessly aloof Liv Tyler) of Culver University, still pines for Banner's sensitive human form.

Tim Roth seems an unlikely candidate to take on the Hulk. As Russian-born, London-raised soldier Emil Blonsky, Roth projects a sleazy killer instinct, but not an imposing military presence. That becomes moot after General Ross injects him with Hulkian joy juice, turning Blonsky into a stomping, throwing, raging machine of a beast with the unofficial name of the Abomination.

So, what we have in "The Incredible Hulk" is a combination of Captain Ahab plus his green whale, Dr. Jekyll plus his Mr. Hyde, and Bruce Banner and his id creature, all bundled up in an attractively photographed package and laced with some welcome humor.

Take the scene where Banner says in Portuguese, "Don't make me hungry! You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry," a mangled reference to a line from the 1970s TV series "The Incredible Hulk" starring the late Bill Bixby as Banner. (He is seen on screen during a clip from his TV series "The Courtship of Eddie's Father.") Lou Ferrigno, who played the TV Hulk, pops in as a night watchman, and also supplies the voice of the CGI Hulk, who finally gets to shout, "Hulk SMASH!"

Stick around for the very end. There's one last cameo appearance from a Marvel star who wraps up the story with a tantalizing tease for a next possible Stan Lee-inspired movie.

This single scene elicited more excitement from an audience at a Monday-night screening than the rest of this movie.

Incredible.

"The Incredible Hulk"

Rating: 2#189; stars

Starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler and Tim Roth.

Directed by: Louis Leterrier

Other: A Universal Pictures release. Rated PG-13 (violence). 114 minutes.