The Incredible Hulk: 3-Disc Special Edition

With "Iron Man," "The Dark Knight" and The Incredible Hulk hitting theaters all within three months of each other, this past summer was a very good one for comic book films. They were generally very high quality, exciting and entertaining.

Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) is on the run as the movie opens. Trying desperately to find a cure for his gamma exposure to "take the Hulk out of him" he's e-mailing back-and-forth with a mysterious helper. Meanwhile, William Hurt's psychotic General Ross is tracking Banner across the globe using a dangerous ex-soldier named Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) as a guinea pig and injecting him with super serum to make the perfect soldiers in his never-ending war with The Hulk. Banner is still in love with Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) and they go on the run together trying to escape her father and the sadistic Blonsky.

The acting in "The Incredible Hulk," a reboot of the Marvel Comics franchise that stalled after Ang Lee's 2003 attempt, "Hulk," is generally very good. Roth is believable, but William Hurt is is not, and is the latest weak villain who stands around scowling and sneering every time he's onscreen. Norton makes for a pretty good Banner, and while he's not the nerdy scientist that Bill Bixby played on the TV series, but he's no tough guy, either. Life on the run has made him hard, and he's trained himself both mentally and physically. Liv Tyler makes for a fetching love interest and their scenes together are interesting (and her scenes with The Hulk are right out of "King Kong"). They have a beauty and the beast thing going, and it and prevents the film from being a total action blowout with no character development whatsoever.

The director here is Louis Leterrier (a French Luc Besson disciple), and he has the right idea with the pacing of the film. It moves very quickly over the course of nearly two hours from chases in Brazil (right out of the "Bourne" films) to a massive brawl with Hulk and The Abomination near the end of the film. The effects are above average, and even though the Hulk still looks cartoony at times, they look much better than in the first feature. The full daylight fight with Hulk and the army is probably the best scene in the film and the choreography is spectacular.

The film looks and sounds terrific. The widescreen transfer is sharp and pretty clean and the audio is loud and booms during the many fight scenes. The extras are very cool as well. Lots of featurettes and a good commentary with Leterrier and Roth. There are also deleted scenes and the third disc is a digital copy that you can transfer to your computer. It's a nice touch, but it feels like a way for the studio to squeeze a few extra bucks out of the consumer so they can get away with saying it's a 3-disc set instead of what basically is a 2-disc set.

"The Incredible Hulk" suffers from a weak villain and not enough character development but it's still an entertaining popcorn movie. Lots of great action scenes and some nice performances make for a quick and painless two hours. Some nice nods to the old show (including the opening credits, "sad walking away music" and a Lou Ferrigno cameo) help smooth over the transition. This Hulk may not totally smash, but it doesn't totally suck either.