FORGOTTEN ANG LEE MARVEL W/ UNIVERSAL 'HULK' PICTURE

Hulk crashes out of The Sting at Victory Drive-In HULK Year: 2003

The early days of modern cinema Marvel when there were no constant one-liners ala Tony Starkasm... Yes, Robert Downey Jr. is funny but soon enough, every damn superhero had to share in his constantly glib persona. Even the recent Star Wars movies use it. Lighten up all the lighting up already... Let's get back to basics...

HULK, the first big screen solo effort, is underrated and pretty good in several ways, taking forty-two minutes until Eric Bana, as scientist Bruce Banner... with the inevitable rage built-in from birth... turns into what Sam Elliott's tough General calls "The Big Man." Taking so much time for the payoff might seem crazy to some, but even KING KONG waited forty-eight minutes to reveal that titular beast. The reason for this is... Suspense: Thankfully, until the long-drawn climax pitting the military verses a sunny desert leaping Hulk (backed by Danny Elfman's worst score), he's kept mostly in the dark, outside, or within softly-lit interiors: like the laboratory he breaks out of to start the ball rolling. While the side-characters, including ingenue Jennifer Connelly and smarmy villain Josh Lucas, aren't altogether fleshed-out, Bana plays Banner interestingly enough so the transformations matter. Also let it be noted that he and Mark Ruffalo (AVENGERS) share a slight swarthy resemblance to the only human to play the creature: the iconic Lou Ferrigno... 

Stan Lee tells Lou Ferrigno security needs beefing up SCORE: ***1/2

Unlike this poorly received blockbuster's poorly received reboot, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, in which brooding and melancholy Edward Norton attempts to lean more towards the TV series that even includes The Lonely Man piano theme, there's a villain-behind-the-villain here, usurping the nefarious Military so not to be one-dimensional, common, and downright predictable...

Enter the always-gruff Nick Nolte, raspier than ever as Bruce's mad-scientist father, David. That's right, David Banner... taken from Bill Bixby's television turn since the show's developer, Kenneth Johnson, found the original name's alliteration too corny. And sure, this HULK gets a bit sappy and melodramatic at times, especially during flashbacks. But it doesn't let enough of that same downtime stagnate (albeit overusing initially cool but eventually distracting multi-screens) to make one forget what/who the movie's really about: There's an omnipresent vibe that that Special Something is right around the corner. And it wasn't a joke back then.