Hellboy II - The Golden Army

It seems that director Guillermo Del Toro has been one of the most renown hot/cold directors to emerge from the Hollywood fantasy scene in the last eight years or so. Gaining critical acclaim for his early Spanish language work Cronos and The Devil's Backbone and then being panned across the board for the commercial flop Blade 2, Del Toro seemed to bridge the gap with the mostly ignored HellBoy. Based on the Dark Horse comic book of the same name, created by Mike Mignola, HellBoy was released to a lukewarm reception just prior to the comic-book-movie explosion (Thanks, Marvel…) alongside blockbusters like Spiderman 2, Punisher and (ironically enough) Blade: Trinity. While not an amazing film, I found the original HellBoy to be a decent starting point for what will turn out to be a trilogy (as is the thing to do these days.)

Though it wasn't until Del Toro released Pan's Labyrinth that he started to become a household name (whether you can pronounce Guillermo or not…) Now four years after the first HellBoy outing comes the long anticipated and budget inflated sequel HellBoy II - The Golden Army. Now I'll give a fair warning, I'm a pretty big fan of the source material and I may find it necessary to point out the differences and therein the flaws of the film franchise compared to the printed medium. That being said, this movie was considerably better than its predecessor.

One of the noticeable differences from the first film is the production design. Now working with the special effects team behind Pan's Labyrinth, HellBoy II's creatures were much more intricate and bizarre than the first outing, ranging from whimsically dangerous to gut wrenchingly twisted. I was also surprised at the amount of puppetry was used in lieu of CGI. Unfortunately, this is one of the areas that strayed from the comics, but not in a bad way. Golden Army's monsters looked more like a mishmash of Final Fantasy bosses than long dead mythological deities, though I've always been a fan of the FF monster design, so the eye-candy was a treat for me.

Performance-wise, David Hyde-Pierce (Niles Crane from TV's Frasier) ducks out on Abe Sapien's voice duties, leaving body actor Doug Jones to fend for himself. Admittedly, he's a bit shaky on the outset, but eventually filled the Fish-Man shoes well enough for me not to have noticed a difference. One of my biggest qualms with the films in comparison to the comics is HellBoy's portrayal. In the comics, he doesn't say much and when he does, it's rather inconsequential, however in the movies, he is basically a Duke Nukem/Ash from Evil Dead/John McClane one liner machine. Which is unfortunate, because I'd like to think the Seed of Destruction, our proverbial Left Hand of Doom has more depth than "Now you've pissed me off!" But I digress. Ron Perlman looks and plays the part to a tee as per usual and Selma Blair manages her way out of the paper bag she's been stuck in since the last HellBoy. The new addition to the BPRD (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Development) Johann Krauss is entertaining for a while and serves his purpose in the end, at least for some rock'em sock'em, popcorn action. Sadly, Jeffrey Tambor's character, BPRD chief Tom Manning, is horridly underplayed (as an Arrested Development fan, it always pains me when any member of the Bluth family is cast and then ultimately cast aside) but then again, there's a consumer friendly run-time to keep in mind.

The story this time around is yet another classic "bad seed seeks revenge on the world and family that shunned him" which would seem redundant if not for the plethora of character involved. It was pretty apparent that there was likely a good 30 minutes of footage cut from the final film as some of the overlaying themes were cut short in the last act, but in today's "unrated director's cut" DVD market, I can see these words on the box art following it's home video release.

Overall, the movie should keep you entertained for it's almost two hours and as usual, it caps itself off while leaving room for the imminent sequel. Mostly, I see this movie as decent filler to bridge the gap until The Dark Knight comes out.