Hellboy
Rated: PG-13
It’s no secret that ever since Spider-Man hit at the box office, movie studios have been rushing to get even the most obscure comic properties onto the screen. Yes, we’ve seen such big names comics like The Hulk and the X-Men come to the screen, but also more obscure properties like Blade and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen also get their chance on film. Some of these films do their original properties proud (Spider-Man, X-Men) others turn out ot be huge disappointments (Hulk, LXG) and others are so bad they become inadverdantly hilarious (The Punisher). But what we haven’t seen is a truly obscure comic property adapted to film and not only possess the spirit of the source material, but the ability to work on the big screen. Until now. 
Hellboy is the collaboration between one of comic’s best kept secrets, based off the series of the same name by artist and writer Mike Mignola and one of filmmaking’s best secrets, writer and director Guillermo Del Toro (The Devil’s Backbone, Blade II). This collaboration has not been an attempt to milk another franchise dry, because certainly Hellboy isn’t a character who really has the mainstream recognition to draw the big crowds based on the name alone. No, Hellboy has been a labor of love through and through. Although Del Toro wrote the script for the film, he had Mignola aboard as a consultant throughout the entire filmmaking process. Del Toro stood firm against idiotic studio suggestions like, “can’t we just call him Heckboy?” and “how about he’s a regular guy that only turns into Hellboy when he gets angry?” Del Toro fought tooth and nail to have fairly-obscure actor Ron Perlman play Hellboy (although you’ve probably seen Perlman in a movie or TV show and just not known it), because both Del Toro and Mignola thought that he was the only one who could play the role to perfection (they were right). Del Toro has worked hard to remain faithful to the comics but also create a film which feels fresh and a film he can truly claim as his own. With Hellboy, his work has paid off. The film starts out near the end of the second World War. In one of the last-ditch attempts of the Third Reich, the nazis try to use the power of the occult with the help of the sorcerer Rasputin (I know it sounds corny, but it's rooted in pulp stories along with Lovecraftian stories) to summon a demon which will give them the power to rule the world. But thanks to the a small band of U.S. soldiers informed of this supernatural plan, the ceremony fails and the summoning stops before any serious damage can be done. However, the rift is open long enough to let something through. That something is a little red demon baby with a huge stone fist. Along on the mission is the wise and compassionate Professor “Broom” Bruttenholm who works for the newly founded B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense). With the power of a couple Baby Ruth candy bars, Broom befriends the stone-fisted hellbaby who becomes called, you guessed it, Hellboy. Flash forward about fifty years and it turns out that you just can’t keep a good evil sorcerer down. Resurrected by the beautiful Ilsa and the astonishing assassin Kroenen, Rasputin comes back and decides to finish what he started. 
But while the main story may be your standard “save the world” plot, what makes Hellboy a special film are the characters and the amount of effort to make them appear real despite their odd appearances and powers. It’s the heart of this film which makes it work. Stealing just about every scene he’s in is Perlman. He knows exactly what makes the character work in that while Hellboy may be a big red demon who fights monsters, he has the attitude of a working stiff and after a long day of fighting resurrected demons, he’s perfectly content to go back to HQ and kick back with a beer and watch some TV. At the same time, he deeply cares for the emotionally scarred Ms. Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), a girl who’s had trouble all her life controlling her power of pyrokenesis. She’s torn between wanting to use her power to help people like Hellboy and wanting to just bury her power and try to live a normal life. There are lots of other great characters like the witty Abe Sapien (played by Doug Jones and voiced by David Hyde Pierce), new recruit and audience surrogate John T. Myers (Rupert Evans) and the curmogeonly Tom Manning (Jeffery Tambor, no relation to Wat) and all these characters which make the film something special. But don’t go in just expecting a lot of talk between a big red guy and his firey girlfriend. Del Toro’s made a $60 million film look like it cost twice that much and the set pieces in this film will really blow your hair back. Del Toro understands that if you’re gonna have a larger than life fight in your film, the audience better be able to feel the blows. And when you have Hellboy throwing down with a monster, it’s fun, it’s fast, and it’s just plain excellent. There’s just this great melding of special effects, fight choreography, and at the core, the look on Hellboy’s face which reads “let me just kill you so I can go home.” The only notable flaw in the film is the score. While the score doesn’t hurt the movie, with such unique and charming visual and character work going on, the music feels far too generic and unimagantive to really carry the film. It’s like Michael Kamen’s score for the first X-Men film. It’s not bad, but it shows a lack of understanding for the feel and flow of the film. Speaking of the flow, the film runs 122 minutes but it feels like half that. The film just breezes by. Every scene enhances the film in some way, whether it be in advancning the plot or just having another great character moment which help to give the film its special charm. Why some may groan and just roll their eyes at the prospect of another superhero film, I urge everyone to please give this film a chance. At the very least it’s a incredibly fun popcorn movie that knows how to entertain. But more than that, it’s a film which knows to put character and story before all else and in doing so, easily becomes one of the better films so far this year. Words by
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