How many comic book films have we seen this year? It's crazy. It wasn't that long ago they on the level of something like Steel. Something to make fast, on the cheap that would soon vanish into rental Hell.
Now we get films like Hellboy II that are practically baroque works of art.
I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit.
Hellboy returns, now with a girlfriend but still the same gruff attitude and some more bad guys to beat up.
That's my main issue with the film; the bad guys. Not that I'm bashing Luke Goss, you understand. But you never got a good feel for them, they didn't dominate the story. The fairy tale creatures and the world created is great but there was just something missing in the last third.
But it's still a great film. It's truly a character piece wrapped up in comic book clothes with a big red horned guy at the centre.
Ron Pearlmen is great as Hellboy, he fits the character like a glove and it shows. The support is also great, they bicker like real people and no one lets the side down. Everyone has room to shine, especially Doug Jones under his own latex as Abe Sapien. It's also really funny. The action is good too.
You can tell where the budget really went though: set and chacater design.
It's stunning. There a ton of animatronic characters and practical effects that look amazing. The chacaters visit a Market full of trolls and Lord knows what else that really makes the film. A whole world is created from pretty much the ground up that is faultlessly presented. It's nothin like what you would normally see in the cinema, let alone just comic book films. It's surreal and grotesqe and visionary.
It also bodes well for the director's version of The Hobbit.
So I really liked it. While it's not perfect I wouldn't hear a word against it. It's also nicely teed up for a third film that I'm very much hoping will be made.
Also, it has the best use of a Barry Manilow song for quite some time.
In a word? Devilish.
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