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Hellboy review
2004.04.24 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole
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He grinds his horns "to fit in." [official site] |
In 1944, Nazi occultists teamed up with mad monk of Russia Rasputin to open the gates of Hell itself and release demons they hoped would win them the war. The US Army intervened and rescued a little red demon baby to be raised to fight against evil as Hellboy. If the idea of raising a demon with the expectation that he will be good seems illogical, hold onto your helmet; you're in for a bumpy ride.
Ron Perlman (best remembered as the beastly side of TV's Beauty & the Beast) is the grown-up Hellboy, with John Hurt as the kindly professor (oddly, Perlman wears less makeup). They form a team of oddball heroes that includes Selma Blair as a fire starter and David Hyde Pierce as a gay aquatic humanoid.
Okay, the aquatic guy is probably not gay, and honestly I don't know much about David Hyde Pierce, but you can bet that fish man doesn't end up with fire girl.
Blandly handsome Rupert Evans participates, if you can call it that, as FBI Special Agent John Myers, a character that calls to mind a classic line from the X-Files: "Special Agent? What's so special about you!?"
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Honestly, how do you make a $66 million movie and not notice that the ending is exactly like Men in Black? |
The heavies are all relative unknowns as well and stay that way, so don't plan on getting attached to them. If I've learned anything in a lifetime of movie-going, it is that Nazis never, ever win. So, like any roller coaster, Hellboy is all about the ride and not the ending. That's good, because it's not much of an ending. Honestly, how do you make a $66 million movie and not notice that the ending is exactly like Men in Black?
Guillermo del Toro (who deserves the blame for Mimic and Blade 2 [no relation to Benicio del Toro]) directed his own adaptation of the Hellboy comic book by Mike Mignola, who produced and consulted. I have a feeling the consulting consisted of things like, "Remember that part in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Nazis opened the Ark?" and "Have you ever heard the Greek myth about the Laernean hydra?"
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Still, the movie sets a good pace, and the character development ...is better than in most action films. |
Still, the movie sets a good pace, and the character development (altho comic-booky and consisting largely of one-liners) is better than in most action films. But the familiarity of the set pieces is unnerving. It's been a while since I've seen a movie that had the guts to send in a team of explorers with several ancillery members whose sole purpose is to carry guns into the dark and shout, "Over here! Aaaaauugh!" I think at one point one of them even said, "Set phasers on kill." Agent Myers seems just like one of these guys, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what his job was or how he was different from them, except that he had no experience dealing with the occult and is given no training.
Del Toro doesn't do a great job laying down the rules of his supernatural world, either. He shows us weird occult happenings, but we don't have any sense of why they're being done or what the expected result is, so all we can do is marvel at the scenery.
Example: Early on, one character apparently gives eternal youth to another character... in five seconds... with one line of dialog... in the middle of a firefight.
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I have a theory that any movie can be improved with the addition of Nazis or tentacle-waving monsters. |
As a result, there's no emotional crunch when we discover the dastardly plans of the Nazis and tentacle-waving monsters, even tho they turn out to involve the heroes more intimately that we could have guessed... only we didn't have a chance to guess. Not that I'm averse to movies about Nazis and tentacle-waving monsters. I have a theory that any movie can be improved with the addition of Nazis or tentacle-waving monsters.* I just expect to be given a better idea of what they're doing and why.
* Imagine these classic movie lines re-written:
"If you build it, Nazis will come."
"I'm the king of the world! Look out, Rose! Tentacle-waving monsters!"
"I see dead people... most of whom are Nazis."
"Help me, Obi-Wan; you're my only hope against the tentacle-waving monsters."
"Run, Forrest! Run! It's the Nazis!"
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about tentacle-waving monsters."
"Go ahead. Make my day... Nazi."
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