The Incredible Hulk

Whether Primal Fear or Fight Club, anger and multiple personalities have played a large role in Edward Norton8217;s career. So, it makes you wonder, who better than him to play the Marvel hero whose powers are a curse rather than a boon? On the other hand, who can imagine the slight Norton as the giant green monster crushing everything in its way?

The talented actor settles all doubts with a sound performance that lifts this story above the usual summer action blockbuster spilling over with special effects. His hulk is a tragic oversized, ungainly child, with little control over either his actions or reactions. Every encounter makes you more eager for the person inside the persona 8212; Bruce Banner Norton, an equally bruised being desperate for some contact to show he continues to be human.

The prequel Hulk ended with Bruce somewhere in South America. Now we meet him five years later in a grungy apartment in Brazil, having managed to elude the US Army. All he has of his previous life as a scientist is a photograph of his on-off girlfriend Elizabeth Ross Tyler or Betty.

Through newspaper clippings we know that Bruce was experimenting with gamma radiation on himself when things went wrong. Now every time he gets angry or too excited, he turns into the hulk 8212; a monster with great powers, but who can lash out at anybody and anything.

Betty8217;s father General Ross a surprisingly martial Hurt thinks that since the US Army was associated with the experiment, 8220;Bruce8217;s body is the property of the American Government8221;. He wants to capture him and turn his powers into an invincible weapon for the US forces. Knowing what these powers are capable of, Bruce refuses to be captured and is on the run.

Norton8217;s Bruce is haunted and hurt, trying everything he can to keep his anger down and the hulk away. In his first re-emergence as hulk after months, he is reluctant to get out of the shadows. The second time he is forced to, trapped in a glass corridor, with tear gas thrown inside. Leterrier conveys the sense beautifully of a man trapped in a cage, with the world feasting on him.

After Bruce reunites with Betty, he tells her: 8220;I don8217;t want to control it the power, I want to get rid of it.8221; Tyler is soft as butter in Betty8217;s role, and in a King Kong-like scene, you can imagine her hugging all of hulk8217;s fears away.

Ang Lee, who directed Hulk, set the tone of the series as a story about Bruce rather than the creature he becomes, as well as about the beastliness one is capable of under strong emotions. While The Incredible Hulk makes a bigger concession to box office, Leterrier retains that essence.

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