After watching “The Hulk,” I couldn’t drop a line that was repeating in my head:

“For me, the action is the juice.”

This is a quote from the 1995 crime drama “Heat,” spoken by a criminal, played by Tom Sizemore, who’s walking into the last score he’s ever going to take.

The line couldn’t match my feelings for “The Hulk” more. This is because the action in “The Hulk” is the juice.

Be it moments where the computer-generated hero is throwing helicopters and tanks around like Matchbox cars, clasped on the tail of a military jet as it reaches suicide heights, or fighting a pack of ferocious house pets, I’m completely hooked.

The action scenes of this movie are pure eye candy: I don’t have to think about it, and I don’t want to. Screw everything else — I’m there to be entertained.

Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) and Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) are two geneticists working with university students on a cell-altering machine called the gammasphere. When the experiment goes awry, Bruce is affected by the gammasphere, unleashing a monstrous manifestation of his subconscious — or as the audience knows him — “the Hulk.”

Individually speaking, the relatively unknown Bana works well just as he did in a supporting role of “Black Hawk Down,” though his work here isn’t very comparable nor does it provide an insight into what an audience can expect in the future.

For Connelly’s sake, however, it’s a sad day when one realizes she provides a better performance than her Oscar-winning supporting turn in the plain Jane “A Beautiful Mind.”

Sam Elliott, playing a gruff military hardass, doesn’t seem to fit in a film purposely trying to tone down its summer movie special effects nature. Less annoying is Nick Nolte, carrying on from his police mug taken last September when he was pulled over for reckless driving. The two roles, particularly Elliott’s, are overwritten and have far too much exposure.

An editing marvel, “The Hulk” splits into segments throughout the picture as a moving comic book. The technique is put to good use, not just used once or twice as a gimmick but instead as a way to tell the story.

On the other hand, the special effects of the film are the opposite Monet — they look good up close, but far away they’re a complete mess. In short, the effects are sometimes silly, often reinforcing the Dockers slogan — “stretch to fit” — in reference to the Hulk’s wonderfully versatile shorts.

Obviously, design didn’t make up for everything — “The Hulk” had so many false climaxes, I was as relieved when the credits began to roll as a nervous 18-year-old finding out his one-night-stand gal pal didn’t turn out to be pregnant.

With so much time on setup, the conclusion is an ongoing, repetitive disappointment.

I was as engaged as I was put to sleep (and almost did — twice) by this movie.

For a summer littered with tired sequels, I’m still the criminal moviegoer seeking the action-packed score.

Unfortunately, “The Hulk” isn’t the score. It could have been, but it ain’t got the juice.