Sunday, July 13, 2008
A+E, In this Issue..., Movies, Reviews
Ride with the devil
‘Hellboy II’ powered by fantastic visuals
Doug Jones, Ron Perlman, Selma Blair and Jeffrey Tambor
Photos/Courtesy of Universal Pictures
“HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY”
Ron Perlman, Selma Blair
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Rated PG-13
Wide release
By Steve Warren
If you listened to “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” on the radio, all you’d hear is low-end comic book dialogue and Danny Elfman’s most pretentious, overwrought score ever. But the visual component is something else again. Director Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), who wrote the screenplay with comic creator Mike Mignola, fills the screen with so many fantastic creations, it’s like watching highlights from all three “Lord of the Rings” movies.
Del Toro’s visual imagination (brought to life by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Guillermo Navarro and others) is on vivid display in the opening scene, in which Dr. Broom (John Hurt) reads his demonic young protege a “bedtime story” in 1955. Illustrated with puppets, it involves a war between humankind and fantasy creatures ruled by Elf King Balor. An invincible “Golden Army” is created to tip the scales, only to be decommissioned when a truce is struck, giving the cities to the people and the forests to the others. But Balor has a wicked son who bides his time until he can break the truce.
Half a century later, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) decides to strike. Accompanied by Wink (Brian Steele), a creature that looks like a spiny ape, Nuada attacks a Manhattan auction house to retrieve an artifact that will enable him to revive the Golden Army and stop humans from destroying the planet through overdevelopment. (There’s a switch—the bad guys are environmentalists!)
Soon enough, Hellboy (Ron Perlman) arrives with his cohorts in the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, including Bureau head Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor), amphibious empath Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and Hellboy’s disgruntled live-in girlfriend Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), who hasn’t yet told Hellboy he’s going to be a father (she’s not too pregnant to tag along on most of the group’s adventures, or to set herself on fire at will without getting blistered).
Abe develops an attraction to Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), Nuada’s twin sister, who’s as good as her brother is evil. The twins share a telepathic connection and a sensitivity to each other’s pain, although in one scene Nuada is able to sneak up on Nuala and startle her.
In this summer of comic book movies, déjà vu was bound to set in. Hellboy is what you might get if you walked into a Hulk store and asked, “Do you have that in red?” One of the movie’s major sequences takes place in the Troll Market, inhabited by an array of diverse creatures reminiscent of the cantina in “Star Wars.”
And the havoc Hellboy wreaks when dispatching bad guys makes him as unpopular as Will Smith’s Hancock with the citizenry. He’s basically a slacker, except when he’s motivated to kick butt, which helps explain his popularity with fanboys—for better or worse, Perlman personifies him ideally. Washington sends a new agent, Johann Krauss (played by John Alexander and James Dodd, voiced by Seth MacFarlane), to keep an eye on him.
Most of the battles are fistfights, some involving flashing blades and a gun or two. They become somewhat repetitious after awhile, as do some of the dialogue scenes in between, but the downest scene in the movie is so unexpected you’ll love it, even if you hate it. (Hint: it involves Barry Manilow.)
“Hellboy II” is better than its 2004 predecessor, but still not quite ready to join the top rank of comic-book movies. “Iron Man” remains the summer’s champ, at least for one more week; but if you just want to see incredible visuals, ably mobilized by special effects, “Hellboy II” is hard to beat. 2.5 STARS