Starting off my summer movie leftover meal was "The Incredible Hulk."

By shrugging off the psychobabble and daddy issues that turned Ang Lee's "Hulk" into hurt, the sequel/reboot frees itself to satisfy audiences as a powerhouse action film. It wasn't the best - or even the third best - comic book film of the summer ("The Dark Knight," "Iron Man" and "Hellboy 2" superseded it). But the green behemoth recaptured enough smashy-smash glory to make his presence in the upcoming "Avengers" movie much less groan-inducing.

"Incredible Hulk" finds Bruce Banner on the run in Brazil, where he spends his time scraping together money at a bottling factory and communicating with a mysterious doctor about a possible cure for the gamma poisoning that turns Banner into the Hulk. But the U.S. military, represented by William Hurt's general, still seeks to capture Banner and weaponize his cellular mutation.

Much of the credit for "Incredible's" success goes to Edward Norton, who emits much more vulnerability than Eric Bana did as Hulk's human alter ego. Tim Roth's rugged killer instinct proves a favorable trade for Nick Nolte's disheveled charisma, and the showdown between Roth's Abomination - a second, spinier green giant - and the Hulk blows away the first film's climax in physical and emotional ballast.

Though "Incredible Hulk" can't touch its fellow comic book films in storytelling ("The Dark Knight"), likability ("Iron Man") or visual dazzle ("Hellboy 2"), it proves a more than competent stopgap between them on the summer movie schedule.