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Let's kick off this review with a statement: I have never read any Hellboy
comic books. Hopefully, that will limit the number of "You don't get this"
and "You don't understand that" messages that will come rolling into PSB
headquarters from die-hard fans of the Mike Mignola-created superhero. I
can't comment about how the film gets it right or doesn't get it right when
compared to the comic. I don't know if the color palettes are the same, or
if the filmmakers managed to capture the essence of the character. I'm just
going to talk about the stuff I saw on the screen.
It seems the key to these comic-book-to-movie adaptations is getting a
director who really digs and is passionate about the source material (a la
Peter Jackson and that movie about the ring). I'm not saying
writer-director Guillermo del Toro (The Devil's Backbone) has eaten, slept
and breathed Hellboy for the last five years, but it's fairly obvious he
wanted to make a movie that Hellboy/Mignola fans would be thankful to see.
In other words, it ain't like Hulk.
So what is this Hellboy, anyway? Besides telling you he's a demon, I don't
really know much else. There was a lot of nonsense at the beginning - the
same type of portal-opening stuff that happened weekly in Sunnydale -
involving science, black magic, and seven gods of chaos with, presumably,
eleven secret herbs and spices. This went down back in 1944 Scotland, where
the Nazis (via Rasputin) hoped to conjure a great killing machine. Instead,
the Allies messed up their plans, and yoinked the infant Hellboy (Hellbaby?)
back to the States, where he was raised by Bureau of Paranormal Research and
Defense founder Professor Bruttenholm (John Hurt).
Flash forward sixty years, and the full-grown Hellboy (Ron Perlman, from del
Toro's Blade II) is still a Bigfoot-type secret, thanks to the BPRD, who let
him out to foil attempts of various super-criminals. Hellboy files down his
horns, loves cats, eats an obscene amount of food and has one giant,
indestructible hand (which, at age 16, is about the size I pictured mine to
be by age 27 via constant masturbation). He grunts gruff one-liners like he
knows he's been an action star for years, and he's got a thing for a
fire-starting cutie named Liz Sherman (Selma Blair, A Guy Thing). But when
Bruttenholm hires newbie agent John Myers (newbie Rupert Evans) to be
Hellboy's handler, the big red dude worries he'll steal Liz.
The bulk of the film, other than setting up the main "good guy" characters,
is spent showing the fight between Hellboy and the resurfaced Rasputin
(Karel Roden, also from Blade II) and his underlings. If you know anything
about history, he ain't exactly an easy cat to kill, and that starts to make
Hellboy a bit tedious. Segments can become quite slow - there just isn't
enough content to necessitate a two-plus hour running time. I'm not, mind
you, asking for more action, as I thought the quieter moments were actually
more effective than the big set pieces...especially the ones that didn't
make any sense.
Being only vaguely familiar with Hellboy, I'd still say Perlman is the best
casting in the history of super-hero films (Danny DeVito as Oswald Cobblepot
is a close second). His Hellboy is charismatic and never once unbelievable
in formidability. Everyone else, however, is a bore. There aren't any
scene-stealing J.J. Jameson-type roles lurking around here. Hurt may as
well have been a cartoon, Evans was more milquetoast than Andrew McCarthy,
and Blair...well, at least she's nice eye candy. Dig the (hopefully)
unintentionally hysterical line, "She likes it black," which is supposed to
be about her coffee preferences but could also summon memories of her anal
scene with Robert Wisdom in Storytelling.
2:12 - PG-13 for sci-fi action violence and frightening images
========== X-RAMR-ID: 37478 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1268387 X-RT-TitleID: 1131153 X-RT-SourceID: 595 X-RT-AuthorID: 1146 X-RT-RatingText: 7/10
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