Hulk (2003)

 “Puny human!”

This is, incredibly, the first ever Hulk film... and it’s utterly, irredeemably awful. It’s a shame: the film is well-directed by Ang Lee with some nice visual touches. But it’s essentially a very, very, well-polished turd.

Part of why it's awful is the poor performance of Eric Bana as Bruce and Jennifer Connelly as Betty. Neither of them are exactly favourite actors of mine; they bring a touch of plywood to this as they do to most of what they do. Admittedly Sam Elliott does a good job with a badly written Thunderbolt Ross, while Nick Nolte is genuinely excellent as Bruce's dad, who also doubles as the Abomination.

But what truly dooms this film is the script, which completely fails to get what makes the Hulk interesting, as well as failing to give the characters and humanity or to give us decent dialogue; some of the lines are cringeworthy indeed. The whole concept is misconceived, drawing on the retconning of Bruce's childhood in the comics of the '80s and '90s under John Byrne and (much better) Peter David, beginning with his father's experiments with gamma radiation in the '60s and dealing with repressed childhood memories. Yet there's a reason this was a retcon; you need to start by just doing the gamma ray explosion and the fun Jekyll and Hyde "Hulk smash" stuff that the Hulk is about. All this childhood stuff needs us to know Bruce/Hulk first so we can start to explore the psyche behind those repressed memories- and make a link between the Hulk's rage and childhood abuse that the film doesn't really make.

Bruce and Betty have no real chemistry or, indeed, personalities, and Betty seems to be there mainly to act as the Faye Wray to the Hulk's King Kong. This may be a film with lots of genuinely cool action set pieces but it has no charm, no characters and is just dull, dull, dull.

Hanna (2011)

“Hanna, what did your mum die of?”

“Three bullets.”

I misjudged this film. It has Eric Bana in it, and, in my experience, films with him in are generally shite! Here, though, his performance is entirely adequate, and the film is bloody good in spite of his presence.

The script is rather good, hinging on the story of the eponymous Hanna, a little girl who is the result of genetic experiments to create the perfect soldier, and who has spent her entire life up until now north of the Arctic Circle. She’s a sort of cross between Heidi and Captain America. All sorts of people are after her, including (in a film which, ironically, stars no Americans) the CIA. Much praise has to go to the performance of Saoirse Ronan, upon which so much depended.

The film is an action thriller with an engaging and exciting directorial style. The action sequences are always in flux; the moving camera is used with great skill and precision to create a sense of pace, movement and realism. The soundtrack, from the Chemical Brothers, is excellent, and compliments the direction perfectly.

The plot is clever, complex, but never over complex. There are some nice twists, there is a great villain who, hilariously, has his own musical score and who is, bizarrely, played by Tom Hollander, everyone’s favourite vicar. There is also a heartwarming yet doomed friendship between Hanna and a rather hippyish British family, the daughter of whom shares a brief but, er, very close friendship with our heroine.

As my very lovely girlfriend pointed out, there seems to be a theme of knowledge from experience versus knowledge from education; Hanna has plenty of the former, and this is what gives her the boost she needs. Her knowledge from education, with no context in the world around her, helps her hardly at all.

The climax is exciting and satisfying, and the final shot aesthetically pleasing. This film is not well known but I certainly recommend it.