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Hellboy - 4/2/04 - PG-13 - 122m
Ron Perlman - Hellboy
John Hurt - Prof. Trevor Broom
Selma Blair - Liz Sherman
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Written by: Guillermo del Toro (Screenplay)
Studio: Sony Pictures
Official
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JEF
This is a classic example of a movie where it’s just meant for fun and entertainment. If you don’t like science fiction, or comic books, or storylines not based in reality, then chances are you will not like this movie. If you can overlook such items like “reality” then perhaps you will enjoy this one. I’m not really saying this was a bad movie because of this, but it really pushed the limits for me.
Storyline: The film starts off around the time of World War 2, and picks up on a storyline that has some basis in truth where the Nazi’s were involved in the occult. The film quickly jumps into the comic book realm, and expands on this basic idea that someone was able to open a portal into another world where demons exist. On this day, a small demon boy escaped through this open portal and was “adopted” by the US Government to be raised. This demon boy was given the original name of “Hellboy” – I guess “John” would have been too plain? Anyway, fast forward, and now Hellboy is all grown up, and his job is to help an obscure division of the government who investigates and eliminates the occult and those “things” like demons, that need to be eliminated.
This turns into a struggle to save the world, and it all rests upon the shoulders of Hellboy.
This movie was based on a comic book character, and is another movie in a long string that seems to be capitalizing on the “comic book hero” plot. I’ve never read the comic book until about a week before the movie started, where I stopped into my local comic book store, and picked up two copies of Hellboy. One was a special ¢25 book that tied in with the movie, and the other was a standard $3 comic book, but also had a tie in with the movie. I thought maybe the comic book would help explain who Hellboy was, but the books were almost as obscure as the movie.
I’m not going to go on about this movie as it doesn’t hold up to an in depth critique. Lets just say that you won’t need to think too much, and if you enjoy new storylines, or amazing effects, then you might like this movie.
I will just point out that the effects were some of the best I’ve seen in a long time. Nothing too original, explosions, monsters, etc… but just the way they were seamlessly integrated into the movie was what impressed me.
The characters were odd, Ron Perlman did a good job playing the main character of Hellboy. Selma Blair played the girlfriend Liz Sherman, and wasn’t too bad either. The strange character “Abraham ‘Abe’ Sapien” was played by Doug Jones, but for some odd reason his voice was dubbed in by David Hyde Pierce best known as Niles on the TV show Frazier. I just didn’t understand this, but that’s ok
I also liked the character Grigori Rasputin played by Karel Roden. This character sort of reminded me of a Clive Barker film.
Are you a fan of the comic book? Science Fiction? Amazing special effects? Then you should see this movie. If you are not, then you should probably skip it. But given the storyline, and the fact that this was a movie adapted from a Comic book, I’m giving this a green light.
Jef
Here’s what Lyn thought…
