The film hits the ground running, with Dr. Bruce Banner now living inconspicuously in Brazil. Instead of any time reference to previous events, the first film, or the origin, we are shown a counter of “days without incident”. Incident obviously referring to Bruce turning into the Hulk and smashing and destroying everything in sight, including puny humans. In Brazil, Bruce practices meditation, breathing techniques and evasive martial arts to calm his powder-keg heart rate, all the while researching and studying himself in desperation for a cure to remove the beast from inside himself.

Meanwhile, back in the good ol’ US of A, General “Thunderbolt” Ross – father of Betty Ross, Bruce’s love of yore – has been hot on the trail of Bruce/Hulk. When Ross gets the whereabouts of Banner in Brazil, he brings in a special soldier to lead the recon team. Enter Emile Blonsky, born in Russia, raised in England and full of piss and vinegar. He’s tough as nails and twice as nasty. A decorated soldier who at his age should be a General or at least moving up in the ranks, but only wants to be a fighter. When the chase brings Banner back to the US, with the chance of a cure, Blonsky wants round two – but they even the playing field a bit courtesy of some US grade super-soldier serum. Long story short, after plenty of smashing and crushing and screaming, Blonsky himself turns into the same thing he was brought in to destroy.

It’s a fairly straight-forward plot, but don’t let it’s simplicity fool you. Emotion and human relation is a key element in telling the story of the Hulk. Ultimately you can say the biggest battle at any time is Bruce against himself. Ang Lee’s Hulk capitalized on this too much and didn’t give the audience the same catharsis that Bruce gets when he transforms into the jade giant. What we get with the Incredible Hulk is emotion that fuels the storyline and the tangible conflicts onscreen. We’re given villain A and hero B and conflict A and conflict B, and we can see a means to an end an the apparent conflict. Ang Lee had nothing like this and couldn’t pinpoint exactly where we should be focusing.

When you boil it all down, the Hulk is a monster. He’s terrifying. He’s rage personified. Ang Lee gave us a Hulk that was born out of fear, out of insecurity, and out of elements that were beyond his influence. Bruce Banner isn’t that weak – he’s a brilliant scientist that’s a tad mild-mannered, yes, but an emotional pipsqueak he is not. I never really saw the Hulk as being a product of Banner, I saw the creature as an unfortunate side-effect. A 1,200 pound side-effect at that. The filmakers for Incredible gave us Hulk the way it was meant to be – pure anger and adrenaline. Make no mistake about it, when the Hulk is onscreen, he is mad as all hell. And it is glorious watching him annihilate everything in his wake.

I have to admit, when I heard Louis Leterrier was helming the film, I was a little disheartened. His only major films have been Transporter 2 and Unleashed. Now, I enjoyed Unleashed, but I had to turn Transporter 2 off I thought it was so unwatchable. I’m happy to say that Leterrier more than proved himself as a director with this film. The pacing was phenomenal, I was constantly entertained from minute one and the story flowed and unfolded wonderfully onscreen. Apparently there is around 70 minutes of unused footage, mostly filmed from Edward Norton’s re-draft of the script. I’m curious to see how that content would have changed the film. Perhaps that will be unearthed for the DVD release. But fear not, for nothing is watered down or dummified – we still get an intense, thrilling balls out Hulk film.

One thing in common with Ang Lee’s attempt, is a stellar cast – though Incredible does something that Lee’s didn’t, and that’s use them and write for them properly. Everything about the cast in this one is totally believable and authentic, from Bruce’s mild-manner-ness to Thunderbolt’s ruthlessness to Blonsky’s power-hungry-ness. Everything just clicked. Marvel is also 2 for 2 in terms of inspired casting. Ed Norton is as good a choice to play Bruce Banner as Robert Downey Jr. is to play Tony Stark. It’s simply the best possible way. I will admit though, that I really dug Sam Elliot as General Ross in Ang Lee’s film, but I pretty much love Sam Elliot in anything. But hell, if you’re going to re-cast Sam, who better than William Hurt? No one except for Gary Oldman in my opinion, and I doubt Warner/DC would want their picture-perfect Jim Gordon bringing bucks to Marvel. I digress, the performances were fantastic, even including a couple of minor roles that will titillate fans of the comics – Doc Samson, and Samuel “Soon to be The Leader” Sterns. If my predictions are correct, we could be seeing one large-headed green skinned evil-genius take on our ever-lovin’ Hulk in a sequel.

huge kudos must be given to the filmmakers for not only creating a wickedly fun flick that maintains the groundwork for multi-film continuity and a Marvel universe on celluloid (beginning with Iron Man), they also managed to pack this flick with so many nods to Marvel’s history and the Bill Bixby television show and it never once came off cheap and superficial. They laid some heavy hints for the upcoming Captain America flick, and Mr. Stark himself pops by with a proposition similar to that of Nick Fury in last month’s Iron Man. As usual, Stan “The Man” Lee has a small role and Lou Ferrigno not only passes the torch to the new Banner, but provides the voice for our green brute.

As for the CGI… it was great. Was it totally realistic? No. You can definitely tell that Hulk and the Abomination are products of 1’s and 0’s, but lets face it… Hulk is a 10 foot tall green skinned monster, I can take a leap of faith. The characters looked awesome, the action was awesome, the sound was awesome, even the score – which even includes the sad piano tune from the Bixby TV show – is, yup you guessed it, AWESOME.

I really do see this telling of the Hulk as the definitive one, that can attract a fan (or even non-fan) of all ages. I would’ve loved it if I saw it as a kid just as much as I loved it last night. It’s a real shame if you let 2003’s abomination stop you from seeing The Incredible Hulk smash a real Abomination.