"The Incredible Hulk" bursts out of the gate like Big Brown in the Kentucky Derby or Preakness and finishes like the horse at the Belmont Stakes -- in the back of the pack, a puzzling disappointment.

That's especially true once an "Iron Man" character makes a cameo, reminding us just how entertaining that comic-book incarnation was.

"Hulk," directed by Louis Leterrier, interrupts the movie portion of our entertainment for a protracted, noisy video game-style fight between the title character and a military monstrosity called the Abomination.

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'The Incredible Hulk'

2 stars = Mediocre
Ratings explained

• Starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, William Hurt.
• Rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense action violence, some frightening sci-fi images and brief suggestive content.

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It's a muscular action sequence, but all the human aspects of the story are lost as a 9-foot behemoth faces off against an 11-foot-tall mutant with an exoskeleton, his spiky spinal column visible along his back. But why cast two superior actors such as Edward Norton and Tim Roth and then have them play second fiddle to their characters' alter egos, the Hulk and Abomination?

This latest attempt to bring the Marvel Comics character to the big screen wastes no time with a back story for scientist Bruce Banner (Norton). As the opening credits flash, we see Banner turn into the Hulk, wreak havoc inside and outside a university lab and unwittingly send his girlfriend, Dr. Elizabeth "Betty" Ross (Liv Tyler), to the hospital with serious injuries.

Banner goes on the lam and disappears into a Brazilian shantytown, where he works at a bottling plant and attempts to control the anger that unleashes the Hulk, thanks to gamma radiation that poisoned his cells. He is on the brink of a breakthrough when Gen. Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross (William Hurt) gets wind of his whereabouts and sends in the military.

That drives Bruce back to the States, where he reunites with Betty and faces off against the general and another soldier named Emil Blonsky (Roth), who takes a dose of Bruce's own medicine in an effort to become a superior fighting machine, only to turn into the aptly named Abomination.

"The Hulk," written by Zak Penn, gives fans the requisite and clever Stan Lee cameo and nicely pays homage to the 1970s "Hulk" television series. Watch for stars Bill Bixby, seen in an old TV show, and Lou Ferrigno, who turns up as a security guard and also provides the voice of the Hulk.

Ang Lee's version of the Marvel hero was pilloried at the time of its 2003 release, and Leterrier faces many of the same challenges. First and foremost, making the Hulk believable. This Hulk is reminiscent of misunderstood monsters Frankenstein and King Kong but still looks like a computer-generated character who is kin to Lee's big green machine. When the Hulk shares screen time with the Abomination, the movie morphs into an effects extravaganza that left me cold.

The Paris-born Leterrier is best known for directing "The Transporter" and its sequel, along with the martial arts film "Unleashed." with martial arts star Jet Li as a slave raised as a killing machine. His "Hulk"is nearly two hours long but makes little time or room for humor (the few funny lines are greeted warmly) or thoughtful exploration of what it means for a man or a military to be at the mercy of its anger.

An outburst by Betty is played for laughs, although there has never been a better time to explore a modern curse such as road -- or fill in the blank -- rage.

Norton makes Bruce an intelligent, sympathetic character, and Tyler brings both a softness and defiance to Betty. A mustachioed and silver-haired Hurt plays the general like a villain with a one-track mind, and Roth nicely tosses off lines such as, "Is that all you've got?" before being hurled into a tree.

"Iron Man" managed to set the stage for a sequel in a more graceful, natural way than "Hulk," which might as well have a "Stay tuned" sign at the end. This "Hulk" may end up being big, but it's not incredible.