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When the Hulk is on screen, cars are toppled and there's the expected explosion but on the whole, it’s light on action. The Hulk battles mutant dogs, jumps from a drop of cluster bombs, and dodges missiles and explosions, but it never really feels like he’s in any danger. There’s never any point where I thought to myself, “Oh no, how's the Hulk going to get out of this one?” Part of the problem is that there isn’t really a main (or at least threatening) antagonist. Josh Lucas’s Glenn Talbot might qualift, but he’s dispatched midway through. Only when the film reaches the final act do we realize that Bruce is against his father, David. However, this Hulk isn’t a superhero. For a comic book movie, the lead here doesn’t save the world, or fight crime. He’s pretty much the anti-hero. In fact you could say that it’s the good guys (the military) against the good guy (the Hulk). It probably wasn’t Lee’s intention, but I found the military’s reason for stopping Bruce/Hulk to be entirely justified.

The pace of the film is slow. At 138 minutes there are some long gaps that feel boring. It’s not till 40 minutes in when Bruce first transforms into the Hulk. Lee mixes in tragedy, love and some repressed emotions, using that first hour to explain a lot of background story about Bruce and his father, and even Betty and her father, General Ross.

The flashy editing has scenes going split-screen in places so you're focusing on more than one thing. It works well at times (such as when Bruce is transported to the underground base), and at one point the camera literally leaps out of the scene and we see hundreds of shots littered around the screen, like the page of a comic book. At other times it’s annoying, as Lee seems to use split-screen on scenes that could have worked just as well without it.

On the run up to the film’s release, Lee requested that no footage from the last half hour be shown in any adverts or trailers. “The end has a very shocking revelation,” said Lee. The conclusion was certainly shocking, for it was such a bizarre mess. Why is Bruce chained to a chair in a huge hanger, while the military simply watch as his father ignites his anger? Minutes later they’re flying through the air (transported via electricity), land at a lake, and fight each other in what Lee describes as, “the sub-consciousness battle.” It’s so all-out-mental and doesn’t really fit.

Also on the run up to the release, a work print copy of Hulk made its way onto the Internet. Authorities found and arrested the person responsible, Kerry Gonzalez, who pleaded guilty to his actions. Even though it was a work print copy, that still didn’t stop those who saw it from spreading more bad vibes online about the middling special effects.

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