Hulk (Widescreen Special Edition)
January 2004 Reviewed by: Anthony Di Marco Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

For a parent, the first act of Hulk is the most heart wrenching. Watching David Banner use his son Bruce as a lab rat establishes the scientist’s dubious grasp of morality, as well as a God complex that is fully realized in the third act. Witnessing the boy trusting his father is even more disturbing. A child looks at his father as a protector. David Banner, though, is pure evil. He pokes and prods at his child without mercy and goes so far as to take a pacifier out of the toddler’s mouth in order to see the effect of his experiment. David Banner is the worst of the worst: a parent who abuses his son to the very root of his physiology. He may not strike Bruce, but the end result reaches deeper than any bruise. The psychological and genetic damage is so acute that it manifests itself as a creature of pure rage.

I did not mind the deliberate pacing of this film. Films fashioned from comic books rarely take time to develop character and story. The editing technique, which emulates the panes of a comic book, moves the story along with consistent and, at times, thrilling kinetic motion. Many people I know find fault with the dialogue and think the acting comes off as melodramatic. Taken in the context of a comic book, however, the approach fits. A pivotal scene between a younger Ross and Banner would seem stilted in a straight-laced dramatic film, but director Ang Lee manages to capture the frenetic pace one would experience reading a comic from pane to pane. This approach was so effective that I fully expected word balloons to jump from the television screen.

Ang Lee may take his time developing characters, but he doesn’t disappoint when it comes to action. The third act of Hulk is engaging. The sequence in the top-secret military complex excites with confrontations befitting a comic book, offering a complete array of top-shelf special effects. The digitally fabricated Hulk is very impressive and only shows the seams of digital imagery when he is presented as a spec in the distance. Just one bird’s-eye shot of the Hulk was unconvincing. The physics seemed wrong as the Hulk rolled down a desert mountainside and struggled to right himself. The animation looked more like that of a video game rather than live action. The close-ups of the Hulk are quite spectacular. Like many CGI characters, it’s all in the eyes. Being the window to the soul, the eyes are what make this green beast convincing.

The DVD presentation is excellent. MPEG compression noise is apparent in a few frames, but overall the pictures are very natural and display outstanding color and sharpness. The sequences in the military installation are the most impressive, and display the sort of quality one expects from high-definition images. Razor-sharp transitions separate beautifully rich and vibrant colors. There is no trace of edge enhancement or dot crawl.

Voices are clear and always intelligible, while the presentation of surround effects is seamless. This is a very good mix that just misses the mark in terms of a reference source. What it lacks is richness in harmonic structure. Danny Elfman’s score is effective and offers enough variety to separate this effort from his work on Batman and Spider-Man.

Special features are above average, but I found the inclusion of a Sunny Delight juice ad a cheap marketing plug that had no place in an otherwise solid DVD presentation. I particularly enjoyed Ang Lee’s insightful and humorous commentary, but found the "making of" documentary no different from most of the junket-type trash that afflicts so many DVD releases. A selection of vignettes tied into specific scenes of the film and accessible through a green "X" restored my faith in the extras.

I get excited when I see a studio take the path less traveled. It would have been easy for Universal Pictures to update the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno version of The Incredible Hulk by simply substituting new actors into the main roles. Instead they took a screenplay by Michael France, John Turman, and James Schamus, and contracted Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon director Ang Lee. To some this may have appeared to be a huge gamble, but you need to take such risks to create something fresh and new.

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