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'Hulk' feels like comic book
By John Behling
Published:
Thursday, June 19, 2003
I'm pondering Universal's logo after the opening titles have passed and the summer's second comic book adaptation is quickly unspooling.
That earth that glows strangely against an abysmal backdrop catches my eye as suspiciously irradiated. Could it be that the mythical world encapsulated by the planetary ring that reads "UNIVERSAL" is tormented by high levels of radiation? That would explain the studio's first attempt at the new comic book adaptation era, "The Hulk."
Meet our hero, Bruce Banner (Eric Bana), a quiet lab geek despite his muscular frame and square-cut head. He is a life-long pacifist, illustrated in a childhood beating he takes without retaliation. But thanks to our friend gamma radiation, things about to change. Big time.
After a lab accident, Banner discovers that a dormant genetic modification he inherited from his estranged mad scientist father (Nick Nolte) turns him into a monstrous computer-generated hulk that tears through concrete like wet paper. The police, the military and the scientific entrepreneurs can't stop him, but one look from the angelic Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) melts away the green testosterone, reducing Banner to an exhausted, naked mess-take a moment to play with that one...OK, moving on.
Unlike other superhero adaptations, "The Hulk" feels like a comic book. Taking advantage of split-screen editing, director Ang Lee places live action cells on the screen.
The experience is like virtually thumbing through a mint copy of The Incredible Hulk (insert your favorite issue here). In the wrong movie, ("Phone Booth" for example) split screen is an ugly, cumbersome device that panders to the ADD-MTV age.
But in the right film, split screen is a tool for visual experimentation. Darren Aronofsky proved it could be artful and useful in "Requiem for a Dream." Roger Avery used it to tackle a brilliantly ambitious shot in "Rules of Attraction," and in "The Hulk," Lee frees it from the label of "gimmick" or "eyesore."
Lee, along with Banner's alter ego, really cuts loose. He shows us two or three things at once from different angles and it doesn't feel like cluttered multitasking, only another form of exposition. In a scene where we would regularly have one shot of guards preparing, we have six or seven. In a shot where one angle of the Hulk would suffice, there are three. In the most avante garde sequence, Nick Nolte's glassy visage remains in a sliver at the top of the screen while action continues in the frames below for a good five minutes.
Almost as striking, on a different level, is the writing. Lee's long-time collaborator screenwriter/producer James Schamus ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "The Ice Storm," "Ride With the Devil") breathes through Hulk's yellowed genre instilling something thoughtful in a typical throwaway plot. The tightly woven theme of father/son relationships holds the film together far better than Hulk's special effects, and shines from Connoley's maternal smile to Nolte's fatherly megalomaniacal ranting.
One effective way to describe "The Hulk" is to see it as a blending of its collaborators' films. See it as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (Lee) bled together with "Affliction" (Nolte), "The Ice Storm" (Lee) and "A Beautiful Mind" (Connolley), but thankfully without a trace of "Black Hawk Down" (Bana).
ALSO THIS WEEK...'ALEX AND EMMA'
Kate Hudson uses a girls-versus-boys spirit left over from "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" in "Alex and Emma," her follow up romantic comedy.
This time she squares off against the charming Luke Wilson. Alex Sheldon (Wilson) must finish his second novel in 30 days or face a pair of Cuban loan sharks. After they burn his laptop as a warning, the writer is without scribe. Emma Dinsmoore (Hudson) is a tightly-shut-book of a stenographer, lured to Sheldon's apartment and kept there by her curiosity for the creative progress.
Rob Reiner must remember the importance of screen time from "When Harry Met Sally," and doesn't cut corners, leaving Hudson and Wilson to slowly grow fond of each other as they joust predictably, but enjoyably.
What doesn't work, however, is Wilson as the neurotic, hypochondriac writer. Nothing sells worse on Wilson whose single expression says to me, "Indeed I am Luke Wilson, perhaps you've noticed how I work my eyebrows while turning my head at different angles and speaking slowly." Hudson's character comes off better, selling sex and sensibility as the plot unfolds.
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