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If at first you don't succeed, try again. Oscar-winning director Ang Lee's flawed 2003 film adaptation of the not-so-jolly green giant struggled to marry a ponderous screenplay with overblown action set pieces, and a central character who looked more like Shrek's dishevelled cousin than an unbridled force of rage.

Five years on, director Louis Leterrier and screenwriters Zak Penn and Edward Norton are doomed to repeat the same mistakes in The Incredible Hulk, a lacklustre rewrite of the opening chapter of the Marvel Comics superhero story.

The eponymous behemoth still looks like a giant plastic action figure rather than a living, breathing entity and even with all the technological advances since the 2003 film, Hulk doesn't interact seamlessly with live action elements or his co-stars.

Leterrier condenses Banner's back-story - the exposure to gamma radiation and subsequent physical transformation - into the opening credits then begins promisingly in the favelas of Brazil where the scientist (Norton) is hiding from General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross (William Hurt) and the military.

Unfortunately, US forces track down Banner, sparking a thrilling chase.

Banner escapes from the melee killing all of Ross's men except for Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), who yearns to possess the same ferocity and strength as the Hulk.

So the military inject low levels of gamma into Blonsky, the catalyst for his metamorphosis into Abomination.

Meanwhile, Banner tracks down his sweetheart Dr Elizabeth Ross (Liv Tyler) to engineer a cure.

Like its troubled hero, The Incredible Hulk is always looking over its shoulder at the past.

The late Bill Bixby, who played Banner in the cult '70s TV series, appears in a snippet from the sitcom The Courtship Of Eddie's Father on a television screen, and Lou Ferrigno cameos as a university security guard.

Composer Craig Armstrong also appropriates Joe Harnell's mournful theme tune for one scene.

Norton cannot compete with the digital trickery. Every time he tries to tap into Banner's loneliness and despair, he's forced to step aside to make way for his lolloping alter ego, with whom we have no emotional connection.

At least Ang Lee's film had the good sense to drop Incredible from the title.

3:53pm Friday 13th June 2008

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