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Review by David DiMichele

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Go ahead, start whimpering and labelling the visionary master Guillermo del Toro’s latest work as lackluster and not containing enough of the creative juice that flowed throughout his recent masterpiece, Pan’s Labyrinth. But truthfully people, what does? He musters up what he can from a comic book from the Dark Horse comic series (penned by Mike Mignola) which starts out lacking a solid foundation for a complete story. But given the extraordinary mind del Toro has, he is able to concoct something quite out of the ordinary to fill that void.

We already know that del Toro paints the screen with broad strokes of unmatched colors, but in the latest Hellboy he reflects meaningfulness in hideous monsters and in extraterrestrial beings he reveals a truly human trait - love. This is the out of the ordinary that del Toro finds and he runs with it throughout the entire film.

Ron Pearlman returns as a Sam Spade-like government-protected gumshoe who wants his bright red body, filed down horns and massive fist to be more visible to the curious public eye. Returning with him is the loving talking fish/alien, Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and his flame-creating pregnant girlfriend, Liz (Selma Blair). Once again they’re guns-for-hire locked away behind metal doors by the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, waiting for that red light to ignite them into squashing heads. Supervised, for the time being, is their boss, who has only become more insecure about his public image, and he hates Youtube. Their job: to protect humanity from underground, cave-dwelling devilish creatures whom the public ever rarely see. If by chance they ever did catch a glimpse they might have been frightened but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were to fall in a dream-like daze and start worshipping the fantastical imagery.

Hellboy and his crew are trying to put a halt to Prince Nuada’s (Luke Gross) preposterous earth-ending plans. After his father, who was king thousands of years ago, locked up hundreds of “indestructible” golden war machines, Nuada returns from exile, seeking revenge on the human people (which is another social attack on the way humanity lives).

Two movie franchises that come to mind after viewing Hellboy II are the Lord of the Rings films and Star Wars films and not because of the story, but because of the characters. The infinite number of characters that each film has is remarkable. I’m not saying that the Hellboy characters are as renowned as LOTR or Star Wars characters. It's just that all of them contain such imagination poured into each distinct character. When del Toro shows us a troll village I was reminded of the village in “Star Wars" where Jubba the Hut resided. Another ode to that film I got was the way del Toro cut between scenes. He used the technique of keeping the scene we are watching in view while the next one makes its way in. As for the LOTR reference, del Toro has been signed to direct the LOTR prequel, The Hobbit.

After grappling, thumping, burning and squirming several creepy crawlers, the real story is unfamiliar territory as far as recent monster films go. Created with a master’s eye is the relationship between four creatures - two couples. We have come to approach these abnormalities as trash, or to think they should never breath human air. Think what you may, but del Toro proves that statement false as he crafts an intricate study of human behavior and monster behavior (Hellboy and Abe solemnly belting out the lyrics from “Can’t Smile Without You” shows life in ways you never expected). Just watch when Hellboy gets a little rock thrown at him by a human pedestrian out of pure hate; it does more damage to him than a 25-legged monster would. It cuts deep to the soul.

Film Rating: *** out of ****

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Comments (3)

Kiss Kiss Kiss... ack

Fantastic on the visuals, way too sappy on the script...

Here's my review:
http://www.screenwritingforhollywood.com/film-reviews/hellboy-ii-chick-flick-script-2008

ScreenwritingforHollywood , July 14, 2008 | url

Action Over Affection

I was more into the action and didn't really notice the romance as much. Hellboy II is much better than it's prequel.

Sizzlingpopcorn.com , July 14, 2008 | url

hellboy

Hellboy 2 was fun; for sure that director has an amazing imagination, reminded me a lot of his work in Pan's Labyrinth

patrick , July 24, 2008 | url

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