The Incredible Hulk is a massive movie. There’s plenty big about it, and not just the Green Giant himself. The size and force of it completely blows Ang Lee’s Hulk out of the water (in fact, it compresses the previous film’s plot into a bitesize credit sequence in its big green fist). The opening shot pours over Brazilian slums in an incredible orgy for the eyes, the shanty buildings filling the screen, and it just feels, looks, sounds better - sexier. Faster. Bigger.
And it’s solid, where Lee’s version stumbled and didn’t connect. Can’t fault the plot: Bruce Banner is on the run, wanted for being essentially a military weapon on legs with a - quite brilliant - mind of its own, searching for a cure to his transformation/rage problem. Cue the interference of Emil Blonsky (teeth-grindingly evil Tim Roth), at the direction of General Ross, the man who instigated Banner’s research program. The first half zips along like your Fugitives, your Jason Bournes, cool and clever and barely stopping for breath. It all goes up to eleven as the pieces drop, with Emil Blonsky getting a taste for the hulkish and convincing a turncost scientist (Tim Blake Nelson, excellent as ever) to give him Maximum Juice, thus becoming The Abomination (a thing bigger than the Hulk, who curiously can talk perfectly normally but also goes trouserless and has no discernible genitalia).
4/5
