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Well, tin, you get your wish. He's actually a lot better looking than the trailers would suggest, but there's still the sense that he's often on a different plane, compositionally speaking, than other stuff in the frame.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Gotta step back. Oh yeah:
SPOILERS
This is a pretty bad movie. Not for lack of trying on the part of many involved, but bad nonetheless. in the end, I thought it was incredibly tedious.
Personally, I don't think there's much going on with the character. You know, industrio-military complex, guy gets mad, gets green, hulk SMASH!, end of story. Works great as an episodic thing, but as a film? I had my doubts.
So does Ang Lee. On one hand, he never for a second lets you forget that this is based on a comic book. Split screen, weird wipes, floating frames and fades - they guy does everything possible to replicate the look of a comic page, shy of actually shooting one on an animation stand. With all the tricks I had some odd Requiem For A Dream flashbacks, given the cast.
On the other hand, he's determined to create some meld of Shakespeare and Wagner, light on the bombast, though, as we prefer our emotions to be softly poetic. The Hulk's first transformation is more a sigh than an explosion, and the whole movie shifts into 'hush' whenever possible. While I don't think that "comic book" and, er, "introspective action" are necessarily at odds, Lee doesn't strike any balance here, going for broke on both sides and leaving a drawn-out, boring mess in the wake.
The script doesn't help. Yeah, the hulk dogs are really, really stupid, but worse are the 180 degree character shifts, or complete lack of reasonible characterization. Betty Ross is the same Hollywood attractive scientist we've seen in a million flicks. When a character reminds you of anything from The Hollow Man, it's a bad sign. The dialogue is laughable, the setups often little more than a collection of incidentals, and the structure is bogged down by too many attempts to be something that's ultimately never born.
It's to the great credit of Jennifer Connelly, Nick Nolte, Sam Elliott and Eric Bana that any of the film is watchable. Connelly and Nolte are fantastic, her with an impossibly anemic part and he chewing the scenery with enough relish to keep a dozen pickle farms in business. Eliott really tries to make a godawful stock character work, and Bana knows he's got his work cut out for him, but throws down anyway. In places, their work was good enough that it took a second to realize how bad some of the shit coming from their mouths really was.
As for the big guy - not too bad. The tank scene is great, easily the top action bit in the film. In context he's less Shrek than supposed, though there's a scene where Lee seems to acknowledge the resemblance, as the Hulk catches his reflection in a pool of water. Yeah, yeah, that's happened before, so mayhap I'm reading too much into it. The shorts look ridiculous, and there's some rubber skin going on. but on the whole, better than feared.
But the script just doesn't know when to stop. The Hulk, as a character, is bound by only one rule - he's fueled by anger. Even that can be bent, as there's a need for the guy to have a couple introspective moments. But it appears the thinking went: 'well, he's already big and green, so fuck it. Let's have him catch missiles, be nigh-invulnerable, and grow larger the angrier he gets.'
The Matrix already proved that no limits=no fun, and this confirms it. Some shred of vulnerability would have really helped out here. Beyond that, god, there's so much. Some good, some bad, and a lot of head-scratching stuff. Why the same frigging score from Crouching Tiger? Why the impossibly cosmic tone? Why rely so much on Akira for inspiration? (Well, I suppose that's obvious.) Why isn't this fun? Tsk.
Ang has definietely done what he wanted to do, but I wish I had a better sense of what that was. Others in the audience felt the same way, evidently: i've never seen so many people walk out of a free screening. This has none of the charm of Spider-Man or the balls/ass puking action of X2...as a Nick Nolte fan i'm satisfied, but how many of us are there? |
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