The Incredible Hulk

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      Starring Edward Norton, Tim Roth, and Liv Tyler. Rated 14A. Opens Friday, June 13, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

      It may be possible to dispute which sex is actually gentler, but no one really doubts which one is more physically deadly. All men know that the elephant in the room is us. So there’s something transgressive yet cathartic about watching The Incredible Hulk, a film with a character literally made of a man’s pent-up hostility. The truly mythical aspect of the Hulk is not that it exists (and is green) but that all the factory-trashing and tank-throwing doesn’t kill people. His version of the Serenity Prayer probably adds an extra clause about poor aim.

      This high-intensity rage and the resultant property damage are not just interesting metaphors: they’re boffo entertainment.

      Director Louis Leterrier is a French protégé of Luc Besson. His overcaffeinated style has matured here into a deliberate yet still intense pacing. He keeps the Hulk mostly off-screen or in partial glimpses, preserving the shock of his appearance and also providing a sense of scale. A thick green finger looks that much more massive when placed atop (and nearly covering) a cowering face. When the action does explode—and you haven’t paid 12 bucks not to see it—it is well-choreographed and not overlong.

      Edward Norton, as star and script doctor (credited as Edward Harrison), brings us a convincing portrait of a man in pain. Bruce Banner is a lonely soul desperate for a cure and, with it, a return to his beloved Betty Ross (Liv Tyler). It’s not just psychological torment that Bruce Banner feels (the script wisely pulls back from the family-abuse theme that made Ang Lee’s 2003 origin movie too harrowing to be fun); we learn that transforming into three metres of ripped muscle is extremely painful, even when cool and necessary.

      Yes, necessary! For The Incredible Hulk is a tale of monsters in competition: Banner, desperate to suppress his worst impulses, and one Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), an aging soldier who yearns for his dark side to actually grow larger”¦meaner”¦Hulkier. Thanks to amazing pseudoscience, Blonsky gets his wish and is inevitably transformed into a suitable match for Banner’s vicious id. It’s bad news for New York City, and fine popcorn accompaniment for the rest of us.

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