Movie Reviews
By Staff Movie ReviewersThe Incredible Hulk
By David Vicari
Screw you, fanboys! I still like Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk film better. However, this one isn’t too bad. It does what it sets out to do, which is to be a straight up action monster mash. With audiences and critics alike having been perplexed by the Ang Lee version (perhaps it was too thoughtful), the potential franchise has been “rebooted” with this, The Incredible Hulk.
Scientist Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) is on the run after being exposed to gamma rays, which turns him into a raging green hulk when angered. Nearly killed in the experiment gone wrong were Banner’s girlfriend Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) and her father, Gen. Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross (William Hurt). Now the military is after Banner to extract his mutated DNA to create an army of super soldiers. The first guinea pig in the new experiment is solider Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), and he becomes an even more powerful and dangerous monster.
It’s been reported that execs at Marvel wanted a low-fat, fast-moving action film and tampered with Norton’s vision (he had a hand in the screenplay) of what the film should be. Norton’s version is possibly a better movie because this version now in theaters can definitely use more character development. The small details are fun, like Banner buying large stretchy pants so when the inevitable happens he may save a pair from being ripped to shreds. I just wish the film had more of these little human moments.
Undeniably, though, the final clash between the two green titans is pretty fun. Sure, the digital effects look cartoony, but you have to admit that there is a hokey charm about it, like watching men in suits destroying miniature sets in, say, Toho’s 1966 War of the Gargantuas.
The Incredible Hulk is like a toy. Just wind it up and watch it go. It’s good, mindless summer movie fare.
The Happening
By Fritz Esker
M. Night Shyamalan, who was once revered for The Sixth Sense but last subjected moviegoers to the hilariously awful Lady in the Water, has returned with the sci-fi thriller The Happening. A woefully miscast Mark Wahlberg plays a science teacher who flees Philadelphia with a handful of others when an unseen force causes people exposed to it to suddenly commit suicide. There are two ways the film could have worked: either as a study of the group dynamics of people fleeing a disaster, or as an apocalyptic B-movie thriller (like 28 Days Later). The dialogue is too awkward and the characters are too flat for it to work on the first level and it’s not scary enough to work as a pure horror film, either. Shyamalan crafts a few creepy shots in the early going when people start committing suicide, but after that, there’s very little in the way of tension. While there are a few unintentional laughs, it does not even fail as spectacularly as Lady in the Water did. In the end, it just kind of sits there.
Mongol
By David Vicari
This historical epic on the early life of Mongolian Emperor Genghis Khan is based on a lot of speculation since there isn’t much known about him. I just wished that the filmmakers would have speculated a little longer about this guy’s life instead of making it a routine love story/action film not far removed from Braveheart or Gladiator. I was hoping for something interesting to happen, like having Bill and Ted show up to kidnap him. The film is directed by acclaimed Russian director Sergei Bodrov (Prisoner of the Mountains) and stars Tadanobu Asano as Genghis Khan. Asano delivers an adequate yet forgettable performance here. Well, I guess I should be glad that it’s not the unintentional silliness that was John Wayne in The Conqueror. Now, as for the kid portraying the 9-year-old Genghis (Odnyam Odsuren), he’s completely vacant in the acting department and really drags down the film’s early scenes. He makes Jake Lloyd from The Phantom Menace seem like Laurence Olivier. Mongol is apparently the first in a trilogy. Here’s hoping the next one will be better.