r. David Banner (Bixby) has wandered the country for years, trying to rid himself of the curse that periodically transforms him into a superstrong, unpredictably violent green monster known as the Hulk (Ferrigno).
His quest has recently taken him to the lab of Dr. Ronald Pratt (Sterling), a government scientist trying to unlock the secret of human healing. This research might also help Banner rid himself of the Hulk curse. Posing as a mentally retarded janitor, Banner keeps a close eye on Pratt's research, surreptitiously aiding the older man's researches with occasional nocturnal alterations to the blackboard calculations. When Pratt tracks down his mysterious benefactor, Banner confesses his true identity, and the two men begin to collaborate in the search for a cure. Banner comes to think of the older man as a surrogate father.
Unknown to either man, a sinister terrorist named Kasha (Katsulas) also covets Pratt's work, for its military applications. He blackmails the lady spy Yasmeen (Grayson), who has long since grown weary of espionage, into pulling off a burglary at the lab. Her interference disrupts Banner's cure before it can be completed, starting a fire that destroys the lab and plunges Pratt into a coma.
Another attack by the terrorists puts Yasmeen and Banner on the same side. Their mutual need to escape their violent pasts leads to infatuation, and then love. They're about to flee the country when they find out from the TV news that Kasha's gang has kidnapped the recovering Dr. Pratt and his wife, clearly intent on torturing them for his secrets. Unable to leave in good conscience without first rescuing the good doctor, Yasmeen and Banner agree to postpone their escape. It's a decision destined to bring Dr. Banner's long journey to a most final conclusion.
The last journey of a tortured titan
Once upon a time, when CGI as we know it today was still in its infancy, it was acceptable to film a version of the Incredible Hulk with no technology more sophisticated than a hearing-impaired weightlifter in green body paint.
The TV version of The Incredible Hulk did not possess either strength or indestructibility on the level of his comic-book or imminent motion-picture counterparts. Nor could his adventures exist on the same fantastic scale familiar to readers of the comics. But he did possess a certain stark integrity. Using the venerable template established by The Fugitive, a previous classic TV series also about a doctor on the run, the producers established Dr. David Banner as a fundamentally decent man who just couldn't help getting involved with the problems of other people as he searched in vain for the cure to his Jekyll-Hyde condition. Every episode became an exercise in waiting for the moment when the villains of the day finally pushed Banner too far, and every episode ended with Banner on the road again, no closer to the resolution of his quest than he had been at the opening credits.
The formula could be tortured at times. Banner faced muggers more than some entire cities populated by little old ladies, and regular viewers are fond of remembering the episode that shamelessly inserted him into the action of Stephen Spielberg's classic TV movie Duel.
But the show had some tremendous assets as well, among them the sheer humanity of the late Bill Bixby's performances as Dr. David Banner. Bixby was an actor of intermediate gifts whose chief talent lay in conveying essential decency. Like all three actors who have played Richard Kimble, the model for the TV Banner, he grounded the silliness that surrounded him. He was able to express Banner's loneliness, and his compassion, and the very real sense, tangible each time he walked alone into the sunset, that he did not deserve this episodic damnation.
When the show was canceled, the character was brought back for a series of two-hour TV movies, some of which were also pilots for series based on other Marvel characters. Indeed, the one featuring Daredevil captured that character better than this year's bigger-budget film.
The Death of the Incredible Hulk was the last of those TV movies, and it delivers exactly what the title promises: the last step in the journey of this Dr. Banner. Alas, it doesn't deliver all that much more. While it's impossible for an exercise in killing off a beloved character to completely avoid pathos, this outing feels tired, perfunctory, less a tragedy than a mercy killing. Banner's frequent transformations into the Hulk provide little of the dramatic catharsis the occasion demands, his friendship with the doctor trying to cure him has no emotional weight whatsoever, and his romance with the angst-ridden lady spy comes out of nowhere and makes no dramatic sense. Bixby has only one good (if ludicrous) scene, talking Pratt out of his coma. There is a nice little politically correct speech about one definition of the perfect soldier, and the usual oily performance by perennial villain and future Narn Andreas Katsulas, but the title scene, when it arrives, manages none of its intended impact. It's not the Hulk's finest hour.
