HELLBOY (ACTION/FANTASY, 2004) Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Ron Perlman, John Hurt, Selma Blair, Rupert Evans, Karel Roden, Jeffrey Tambor, Doug Jones, Billy Hodson, Corey Johnson, David Hyde Pierce (voice role)
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence and frightening images.
122 minutes
SCAREmeter: 4.5/10 (sure to frighten young/sensitive children, nothing too scary for anyone over the age of ten)
GOREmeter: 4.5/10 (comic book/sci-fi monster gore, monsters torn to pieces, one villain appear gruesomely mutilated)
LAUGHmeter: 5.5/10
OVERALL: 3/4
Before GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, Hellboy was probably the most obscure comic book superhero to have his own major Hollywood movie, at least one with a budget north of $50 million. Based on a cult-favorite comic book series created by Mike Mignola and published by Dark Horse Comics, Hellboy is described as the "World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator", "Son of the Fallen One", "The Right Hand of Doom" and the "Beast of the Apocalypse", but he's also mankind's greatest ally in defense against the darker forces of this world and others. One of his small but hugely devoted number of fans is Mexican-born filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, whose career has been marked by an unparalleled understanding of fairy tales and monsters, an incredibly lush visionary aesthetic and warm character relationships.
In HELLBOY, also known as HELLBOY: SEED OF DESTRUCTION, the titular demon is a top agent for a top-secret government agency called the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, or BPRD. Having been brought into the world during an Nazi experiment blending science and black magic under the guidance of the "Mad Monk" Grigori Rasputin (Karl Roden) in WWII, the infant demon brought through a dimensional portal was intercepted by a team of Allied soldiers who dubbed him "Hellboy", and the red-skinned demon with a stone hand was raised in secrecy by the Allied occult specialist Professor Trevor "Broom" Bruttenholm (John Hurt; played in youth by Kevin Trainor), who, in essence, adopted him and helped found the BPRD. In the present day, a resurrected Rasputin, flanked by his most devoted disciples, Ilsa Haupstein (Bridget Hodson), a Nazi scientist and Rasputin's lover, and Karl Ruprecht Kroenen (Ladislav Beran), a sword-wielding Nazi assassin,
HELLBOY came out toward the beginning of the new-found popularity of superhero movies that had been kick-started by the box office hits X-MEN (2000) and SPIDER-MAN (2002), and while most of the A-list characters had been taken, including the aforementioned, as well as HULK (2003), many studios were scraping for whatever they could get, such as the lesser known (at least among the non-comic-reading public) or otherwise less marketable adaptations of DAREDEVIL (2003), THE PUNISHER (2004), ELEKTRA (2005) and FANTASTIC FOUR (2005). Del Toro had directed BLADE II (2002), also a superhero film but not in the same sense as Spider-Man, which finally gave him the clout to direct something more personal in HELLBOY, an unlikely comic book to adapt, but then again, everyone wanted superhero movies. Although initially planned with a budget around $100 million (pretty standard for major action movies at the time), del Toro's choice of leading man led studio executives to cut the budget in half, ultimately made for a reported $66 million, but it was entirely worth it. Ron Perlman, a B-list actor who del Toro worked with in his debut feature film CRONOS in 1993, is the only man that could play del Toro's Hellboy, and as inspired as inspired casting gets. Covered in prosthetic makeup and red paint, Perlman is barely recognizable, but the character actor makes an unexpectedly likable leading man, making wisecracks while beating the hell out of monsters and pining after his morose fellow BPRD agent Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), an emo with unstable pyrokinetic abilities. Indeed, the influence of SPIDER-MAN is present in their own big superhero-styled kiss.
The sequel will be even better...
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