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Disappointing, considering the director and cast

Posted : 2 years, 1 month ago on 17 March 2022 04:24

I do remember seeing this film on TV once, and other than the visuals, good music and two or three decent performances I didn't think much of it. I was considering a re-watch, but was advised by a very reliable and trust-worthy pen pal not to. But as I have said many times about other movies, I was curious. As I do love the director and think highly of the cast, I did finally give it a chance. And my initial reaction sadly hasn't changed.

I will give credit where it's due. It is an artistically tasteful film, with wonderful cinematography and editing and the effects are great. The score is also memorable and more importantly fits with the movies' tone. And I found Eric Bana very charismatic in his role, and I enjoyed Sam Elliot too.

Jennifer Connelly does okay with what she's got, but I didn't find her character as interesting, in fact she came across as unnecessary and vapid at points. Nick Nolte I like, but he overplays here and it doesn't help that his whole story was on the misconceived side and in a way feels like a different movie altogether.

I mostly liked Lee's direction too. I am very fond of Lee, he is a great director and has a very distinctive style which comes through loud and clear with Hulk, and I love his films. Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are two of my favourite movies of all time, I love the Ice Storm and Sense and Sensibility is one of the better period drama films I've seen.

Although he does do a decent enough job here despite a tendency to let his style get in the way of telling the story and making us connect to the characters(the only time I have felt this about him), sometimes even impressive, there are reasons why this is my least favourite film so far of his.

First off, I wasn't all that impressed by the action. Not that it was badly edited or choreographed, in fact these scenes are done with efficient style and the choreography doesn't look all that clumsy. It is all to do with tone, most of the action sequences here don't fit all that well with the feel of the overall film, the fight with the poodles is a prime example, which felt rather silly compared to the film's intensity.

The script has some brooding lines from Bana and Elliot, but some lines feel stilted or delivered in a bland fashion. Which brings me to the story, I loved the idea and had no problem with it. It also started off great. Its problems was that the more over-complicated it got, the more leaden the pace got too and the more things were left with little to no explanation, leading to one of the weakest and most disappointing endings I've seen for any comic book movie. Ridiculous is a more ideal way to describe it.

All in all, considering the director, concept and cast involved, Hulk was very disappointing and didn't live to hopeful expectations of improvement on re-watch. 4/10 Bethany Cox


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Hulk review

Posted : 9 years ago on 10 May 2015 06:06

This is one of the best comic book films I have ever seen. I love its bold style, and use of editing shots together in ways to make it look like a comic book coming to life. Ang Lee's directing is brilliant!


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Hulk review

Posted : 9 years, 7 months ago on 5 October 2014 03:53

This film from Ang Lee could have been the best superheroes movie ever made but unfortunately it's not... due to some technical flaws in the visual effects departement and in the screenplay.
first let's talked about the great points of the movie 1-The directing is amazing and one of the best 2-The casting is awesome and Jennifer Connelly is beautiful and great 3-There's some outstanding action scenes in the canyon and in the desert with the mid tank 4-The screenplay is great but at the end the final battle is extremely desappointing.
Now the bad points 1-The visual effects of the dogs are terrible and cartoonish and they look like the one in the comedy movie The Mask(1994) 2-The visual effects of the main character are not extraordinary 3-The Final battle Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) and his father (Nick Nolte) it's a total flop visually .
Overall it's great film who could have been remarkable without the bad visual effects and the sooooooo desappointing ending.
My Rating : 3.5=Very Good - My Pleasure Meter : 4.0/5.0 Stars


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Hulk review

Posted : 10 years ago on 15 April 2014 08:40

I didn't really like this hulk as much as nortons or ruffalo's but hey, they tried. Overall it was a pretty weak performance though. I wouldn't really recommend this to any but the biggest hulk fans, and then it's really only to say they saw it.


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A failed movie franchise

Posted : 13 years, 7 months ago on 14 October 2010 10:36

Even though this movie has a rather lame reputation ย (it is even considered by many as one of the worst super-hero features), I always had a weak spot for the damned thing and, in fact, I would even go as far as saying that it is one of my favorite movies in this genre. Indeed, even though Marvel has been incredibly successful with its MCU, ย most of the movies in this franchise always follow the same generic and rather boring template and Ang Lee followed a different path which was, in my opinion, ย much more interesting. Basically, he went for some kind of Greek tragedy as Bruce Banner got his powers from birth after his father did some experiments on himself and, to amplify the drama, his father killed by accident his mother in front of Bruce who became highly traumatized in the process. That was some heavy stuff and Marvel would afterwards always focus on some much ligther material staying away from such dark tales in the future which was just too bad. Furthermore, Eric Bana was actually pretty decent playing this conflicted character and, at least, he was physically not such a huge stretch from the Hulk, especially compared to Edward Norton who looked nothing like the green monster. Eventually, the only major issue with this movie and the major reason why this movie was widely dismissed was the fact that Ang Lee clearly didn't care much about the action scenes. Indeed, there were only a few of them, they were not really convincing at all and, to make things worse, the Hulk looked very often pretty ugly which was considered like a major offense for all the fans of the comic-book. Well, like Ang Lee, I didn't care much about these action scenes, ย I thought he gave a really interesting portrayal of this character and, in my opinion, this flick must be the most underrated super-hero feature made so far.



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