Hellboy
Directed by Guillermo Del Toro.
In a time when Hollywood has gone super-hero crazy, it’s somewhat easy to become blasé about the whole thing, especially when most of them are bland and formulaic exercises designed to make money. The Spiderman and the X-Men movies have raked it in at the box-office, but they have also been pretty successful movies in their own right, primarily, one might say, to the care of the directors, Sam Raimi and Bryan Singer, respectively, who clearly believed in their material.
Guillermo Del Toro is another director who stands by the inherent qualities of his source material, and this makes Hellboy an above-average effort. While one of the 2nd tier comic book heroes from Dark Horse, Hellboy (Ron Perlman) is a pretty interesting character, and the world he inhabits has great style. Torn from hell in 1944 by Nazi occult experiments, in modern day he finds himself fighting the good fight against evil. The trick is, he isn’t allowed outside (a 7 foot red skinned man sticks out in a crowd) and lives in a paranormal research facility under his adoptive father, Trevor (John Hurt) and an FBI Agent, John Myers (Rupert Evans). He is hence unable to visit his pyrokinetic love, Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), who is trying to control her abilities in a mental hospital. Typically there are some ill-inclined folk who wish to open a portal to hell; usual stuff; and it involves a fellow by the name of Rasputin, who we are to believe is the Rasputin.
The opening ten minutes features a stunning rain-soaked scene in 1944 where the Nazis are up to their usual occult tricks, and it’s almost worth seeing for this alone. The script is clever and funny, the characters and love story have reasonable development, and Ron Perlman has a great time despite being under layers of makeup. The movie also features gorgeous photography (albeit of the dark and gloomy kind) and a great music score by up-and-comer Marco Beltrami. It falters slightly with some confusing editing and some extended battle scenes with these squid-with-legs-Medusa type creatures which frankly aren’t that interesting. The villains are also pretty bland and not enough is made of the Nazi element.
Still, it is very apt that Del Toro described Hellboy as “made by geeks for geeks”, as while Hellboy isn’t as good as Spidy or X-Men, it’s certainly a solid comic book outing that has been made by people who believe in the story they are telling.
*** (out of four)
Joshua Blackman
