The Incredible Hulk

Think about it: Primal Fear, American History X, Fight Club? When you want the affable dork with a dark side who when crossed becomes a rager to be reckoned with, you cast Edward Norton. Hence The Incredible Hulk, whose time Norton’s gentle scientist passes by enduring gamma-radiation-induced transformations into a seething rampage of computer graphics; fleeing the Army general father (William Hurt) of his estranged girlfriend (Liv Tyler); and fighting an intensely aggressive mercenary (Tim Roth) who willingly becomes a gamma-ray ’roid monkey himself. It’s not a sequel so much as Marvel Studios’ and director Louis Leterrier’s rebuke to Ang Lee’s angstier, artier, earlier Hulk of 2003. Based on the 40-year-old comics and playfully allusive to the ’70s TV series, Zak Penn’s perfunctory screenplay plus Leterrier’s blunt, banal and sometimes befuddling action equals been-there-done-that. Thanks to Norton, though, this Hulk is credible.