VARIETY: To anyone wondering why the Marvel team would so soon embark on a makeover of the growly green giant after all the angst endured on the previous one, the answer is provided by the final scene, in which the star of the most recent Marvel B.O. smash unexpectedly turns up to ask, “What if I told you we were getting a team together?” New film thus marks the first step in the label’s plan to begin shuffling its major characters into films together, a la some of the comicbooks — a scheme that seemingly required the rehabilitation of the Hulk from something that came to be regarded as perhaps too rarefied, not of a piece with the studio’s other cinematic stalwarts.Viewed in this utilitarian light, the new film gets its job done. It’s not especially exciting or surprising, lacking the cheek and sheen of “Iron Man” and the opulence and star power of the “Spider-Man” and “X-Men” series. But it’s better than the “Fantastic Four” pictures and “Daredevil” and manages to shift the title character from a hopelessly conflicted Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to a wannabe good guy.
It seems that none of these Marvel-based films can begin with anything other than a medical experiment gone madly awry, leaving its subject with a drastically split personality. This one gets it over with pronto, after which scientist Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) hides out anonymously in a Brazilian favela while desperately trying to decontaminate his blood, eliminating the cells that can make him, if sufficiently incensed, turn into a raging, bemuscled, 9-foot screamer with disagreeably antisocial habits.
Keen to track Bruce down is Army Gen. Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (a cigar-chomping William Hurt), who
oversaw the experiment. He wants to bend the results to military purposes and sends mad-dog soldier Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) flying down to Rio to snatch the elusive fugitive. Resulting pursuit is a partially parkour-style chase through the pinched passageways and across the roofs of the hillside slums that entertainingly recalls but doesn’t nearly match the flair of the opening sequence of “Casino Royale.” The Hulk makes his first kick-butt appearance in Brazil 23 minutes in, but is only partly seen, and in shadows at that.
Despite the manpower expended to bring him to heel, Bruce is able to make his way back to Virginia, stopping en route in Mexico to buy a pair of stretchy pants, which he rightly predicts will prove useful down the line. In the intervening six months or so, g.f. Betty (Liv Tyler), old Thunderbolt’s daughter, has taken up with a new guy, but she immediately drops him when her old flame reappears with major issues to deal with. MORE