Horn Free
Despite writer and director Guillermo del Toro's creative touches, Hellboy suffers from a sluggish pace, confusing narratives and a weak plot. Dominated by a malevolent theme, Del Toro mixes Dirty Harry's method with Marilyn Manson's mood and ends up with a milder expression of nihilism. The story is based on Mike Mignola's comics.
It's a troubled start. The creature arrives on earth through a supernatural portal that is opened by the Nazis in collaboration with a man named Rasputin. Hellboy is adopted by a superstitious academic and raised in the professor's Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, where he teams with other freaks to fight bad monsters.
Though the action is swift and the character exhibits real emotion, Hellboy feels like several other movies crammed into one. With Raiders of the Lost Ark's Nazis, X-Men's freaks, The Hulk's tormented origins, Aliens' egg-droppers, even Madonna's "Express Yourself" music video, with its Italian fascist set design—and a sadomasochistic blonde to boot—Hellboy is a hodgepodge of horror, adventure, crime, sci-fi, and comedy.
The comedy works best. Hellboy's biggest laugh line is a medical scene in which he learns that he's been implanted with monster seed. Hellboy, who devilishly smokes cigars, deadpans: "He didn't even buy me a drink." Veteran actor Ron Perlman plays the red, horned comic book character like an ordinary guy who would rather kick back with a six-pack than chase the world's destroyers.
Perlman is a powerful screen presence, but Hellboy's humor holds him back. It's impossible to get excited about the end of the world—Rasputin's, the blonde's and a Darth Maul knockoff's aim—when the lead character treats every conflict as a tedious task. Hellboy's only passion: his affection for a black-haired Goth-chick (Selma Blair) whose anger ignites fire. And her name isn't even Hellgirl.
Hellboy is one dense dude: he's not remotely interested in what moves the world toward doom, he doesn't notice when his father (John Hurt) becomes sick, and he fails to make the simplest connections. Though a pseudo-theme about free will is tacked on toward the end, Hellboy's big moment goes down in flames.
Rupert Evans as a handsome young fed is just right in the movie's most interesting role, and Jeffrey Tambor's FBI chief puts a clever twist on a clichéd authority figure, though it's lost in the confusion. Plot contradictions are too numerous to mention, and the featured gore is brief but extremely foul.
Like most of today's comic book pictures, evil is invincible, mystical powers are subjective, and good guys are barely good; they are decent by default, full of flaws, grime and gloom. Hellboy is also full of religion; he's apparently at his best when he's clutching the cross.
What draws the public to these ghastly, anti-hero pictures admittedly eludes this reviewer. Perhaps it's a fading sense of the epic combined with a sense of impending, certain doom. While Hellboy isn't as bad as its predecessors are, even the legion of pierced, fuzzy-chinned males in black t-shirts who slogged out of a recent screening seemed disoriented by Hellboy's tamer spectacle. Hellboy was probably too happy for them. For anyone else, no wonder of Hollywood light and magic will illuminate this dark, dreary path.
It's a troubled start. The creature arrives on earth through a supernatural portal that is opened by the Nazis in collaboration with a man named Rasputin. Hellboy is adopted by a superstitious academic and raised in the professor's Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, where he teams with other freaks to fight bad monsters.
Though the action is swift and the character exhibits real emotion, Hellboy feels like several other movies crammed into one. With Raiders of the Lost Ark's Nazis, X-Men's freaks, The Hulk's tormented origins, Aliens' egg-droppers, even Madonna's "Express Yourself" music video, with its Italian fascist set design—and a sadomasochistic blonde to boot—Hellboy is a hodgepodge of horror, adventure, crime, sci-fi, and comedy.
The comedy works best. Hellboy's biggest laugh line is a medical scene in which he learns that he's been implanted with monster seed. Hellboy, who devilishly smokes cigars, deadpans: "He didn't even buy me a drink." Veteran actor Ron Perlman plays the red, horned comic book character like an ordinary guy who would rather kick back with a six-pack than chase the world's destroyers.
Perlman is a powerful screen presence, but Hellboy's humor holds him back. It's impossible to get excited about the end of the world—Rasputin's, the blonde's and a Darth Maul knockoff's aim—when the lead character treats every conflict as a tedious task. Hellboy's only passion: his affection for a black-haired Goth-chick (Selma Blair) whose anger ignites fire. And her name isn't even Hellgirl.
Hellboy is one dense dude: he's not remotely interested in what moves the world toward doom, he doesn't notice when his father (John Hurt) becomes sick, and he fails to make the simplest connections. Though a pseudo-theme about free will is tacked on toward the end, Hellboy's big moment goes down in flames.
Rupert Evans as a handsome young fed is just right in the movie's most interesting role, and Jeffrey Tambor's FBI chief puts a clever twist on a clichéd authority figure, though it's lost in the confusion. Plot contradictions are too numerous to mention, and the featured gore is brief but extremely foul.
Like most of today's comic book pictures, evil is invincible, mystical powers are subjective, and good guys are barely good; they are decent by default, full of flaws, grime and gloom. Hellboy is also full of religion; he's apparently at his best when he's clutching the cross.
What draws the public to these ghastly, anti-hero pictures admittedly eludes this reviewer. Perhaps it's a fading sense of the epic combined with a sense of impending, certain doom. While Hellboy isn't as bad as its predecessors are, even the legion of pierced, fuzzy-chinned males in black t-shirts who slogged out of a recent screening seemed disoriented by Hellboy's tamer spectacle. Hellboy was probably too happy for them. For anyone else, no wonder of Hollywood light and magic will illuminate this dark, dreary path.
