Hulk

Justified, sanctified, and sanitized for your consideration, contemplation, and consumption, albeit it through a Politically Correct filter, free of discriminating taste and reasonable prejudice.

All presented with the subtlety of a sonic boom.

In a nutshell, this is "Hulk" ('The' was dropped for reasons not entirely clear): The latest from film director Ang Lee, who previously created such emotionally and visually stirring films as "The Ice Storm" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".

Much has been made over this particular fact--that Lee is the director--with few understanding why he chose to make this movie.

I just told you: Because he previously directed such emotionally and visually stirring films: This is the flip side, the antithesis of them: A movie all but devoid of emotion and visual energy. A flick whose sole reason for being is not to inspire or encourage but merely--MERELY--entertain.

The reason for this is simple: In the Marvel universe The Hulk is the odd duck out: He has powers that are not an asset but a liability; a curse, more accurately: When rage and fury overtake the otherwise mild-manner Dr. Bruce Banner a big green monster takes over and things get smashed, crushed, and wacked with a mighty roar and throaty howl, a mighty fist and a great swing.

Albeit in an entertaining way: We want to see this because all of us, at one time or another, have secretly desired to overwhelm our surroundings, our environment, our reality--individually and collectively.

Although, personally, I have never had the need or desire to do so colored green.

The Hulk, I suggest, is what many of us want to be: Neither hero nor evil. We just want to lash back at the world we opine has wronged us in some manner or fashion.

Of course such a desire comes with a heavy burden: Cause great damage and scare normal people and you will be pursued, much in the way Frankenstein's monster was, much in the way the Hulk is here.

Now here is the thing: Director Ang Lee set out to make a movie that aspires to do nothing more than entertain, and ultimately ends up doing far, far more than that. To be specific he made--perhaps unintentionally--a movie that celebrates pop culture nihilism: Violence as art, High Art. Here is a big-budget, high-concept flick that cheers selfish destruction, that laughs at deliberate ruin, that delights in what is nothing less than terrorism.

And because this movie does all this it will be a box office hit.

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