The Incredible Hulk

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Year:	2008
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Louis Leterrier
Genre:	Muscular mayhem
Starring:	Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt
Rating:	3/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800080/
Tagline:	On June 13, get ready to unleash the beast.
Favourite line:	"You didn't give me enough of your blood. So I concentrated it, synthesized it... and made more."

After Ang Lee's surprisingly emotional take on the green behemoth was critically slammed, time out was taken, apparently for the studio to decide on how best to approach a potential sequel.
Continue with the humanistic angle?
Go for all out action?
Or something altogether new?
Well, it seems they couldn't quite decide, so instead went for a mash up of the three.

This time around the ever reliable Edward Norton plays Bruce Banner, erstwhile scientist and gamma radiation sufferer who, when angered, transforms into everyone's favourite knockaround man mountain.
The US government are incredibly annoyed that he has eluded them so far and finally track him down to a bottling factory in South America after a drop of his blood inadvertantly finds its way into the pop in the bottle. Inevitably, he escapes their evil clutches and so begins a cat and mouse chase across the continent, Banner desperate to find a cure, the shady military sorts more than eager to weaponise others in a simlar, though more controlled way and want to get their paws on him to examine him in greater detail.
Oh, and he's also getting it on with Liv Tyler, who just happens to the daughter of the military bod in charge of the chase down.
Coincidence or what?

It's a strange mix.
The 'Banner hunting cure' sections are interspersed with moments of Hulk related carnage, though it gets a little repetitive by the third similar sequence.
It's the problem with the character, you see. All he can do is get really big and smash things up.
Things take a turn for the worse for the last twenty minutes when Tim Roth's elite soldier, Emil Blonsky, himself transforms into another monster, Hulk 2 if you will, and the rest of the film delves into the realms of videogaming, with the two gargantuans facing off in a CGI-fest that is just plain tedious. It's as if the makers of the movie realised they had a huge wedge of cash left over and decided to splurge.
So, 4 out of 5 in general, but a mark gets knocked off for the ridiculous and ultimately crushingly dull ending.