The Incredible Hulk

Imagine Jason Bourne in stretchy pants. That's the basic idea in Marvel's relaunch for Stan Lee's Jekyll and Hyde character.

Five years ago Ang Lee produced a thoughtful but self conscious and only half successful version starring Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly and Nick Nolte. Reviews were good and bad. Business was just okay.

No one from Hulk 2003 survives in 2008, except for Stan Lee and original TV Hulkster Lou Ferrigno, both of whom are back in witty cameo roles.

Ed Norton takes over as scientist Bruce Banner, a choice that plays up the Jekyll and Hyde theme, and which capitalizes on the actor's schizoid track record in films like Primal Fear and Fight Club. (Norton has a hand in the script too, though the prolific Zak Penn has sole credit on screen.)

First seen hiding out in a Brazilian favela, Banner is keeping a low profile after losing his rag during Gamma experiments conducted for the US military. He hadn't realized at the time that General Ross (William Hurt) meant to develop a super-soldier, an invulnerable fighting machine. Now Ross is desperate to reclaim his prototype, and Banner is just as desperate to find an antidote that will rid him of his condition.

He may not suffer from amnesia, but like Jason Bourne, Banner has a scary tendency to turn into a pure killing machine if you push him. And like Bourne, he realises that in order to disable that reflex he's going to have to return home and see what really makes him tick.

His biggest ally is his former scientific colleague, Betty Ross (now played by Liv Tyler), who holds the original testing data. Then there's the mysterious Dr Blue, with whom he's been comparing notes over the internet.

But he also risks bumping into his potential nemesis. Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) is a gung-ho commando, a Russian who was raised in Britain, you will be glad to know, and whose main goal in life would seem to be to find a fight worthy of his mettle. 'Is that all you've got?' he leers after the Hulk has battered him with the hull of a crashed helicopter, and there's a clear masochistic edge to his provocation.

Blonsky persuades General Ross to let him try some of that Gamma poison that produced the Hulk, and each time the two of them square off, the match gets tougher and the stakes get higher.

This is all pretty straightforward storytelling. Nothing wrong with that. The French filmmaker Louis Leterrier (Unleashed; Transporter 2) doesn't carry the same intellectual or artistic baggage with him that Ang Lee does, but he seems more in touch with the comic book's pop mythology, and his jokes are funnier (Banner mangles his famous catchphrase in Portugese he's learned from Sesame Street's Oscar the Grouch).

I can't say I believed the ponytailed Liv Tyler as a cellular biologist or whatever it is she's supposed to be, but there is palpable tenderness in her scenes with Bruce and his engorged alter ego. This is Fay Wray and King Kong; Beauty and the Beast all over again.

I haven't seen Ang Lee's movie since it came out, but I recall finding the CG Hulk too plastic and cartoonish, as if he'd dropped in from another film entirely. The transformations here are woven into the fabric of the movie with some care ' often they're shrouded in darkness or fog ' and the Hulk has a very real physical presence.

Leterrier and co are still careless about collateral damage. Of course they can't afford for the violence to be too painful and to put off the family/preteen audience, but the movie would make more emotional sense if Bruce Banner acknowledged the blood on his hands after one of the Hulk's rampages ' the US airman who must have been flying that helicopter, for instance. Mind you, it's good to see the US military fingered as the ultimate Evil Scientist here.

Like Iron Man, the climax is a bit of a yawn ' it boils down to two big apes slugging it out with an entirely predictable outcome ' but most of what precedes this is vigorous and sharp. The teaser ending hints that we'll be seeing more of both of them in a year or two. It's an exciting prospect.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com