Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
Directed by Guillermo Del Toro
Starring Ron Pearlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Seth McFarlane and Luke Goss
Hellboy 2 kinda reminds of what sci-fi/fantasy use to feel like. Y’know, many, many, many years ago in the 1980s. Physically, it has the same texture of movies like Return of the Jedi, Legend, Dark Crystal, E.T., Gremlins, etc. It might have to do with the usage of physical effects over digital. A fact that becomes very apparent in one scene of the film at “The Troll Market.” Puppets, costumes and latex tumors walk around in this Jim Henson Chinatown. It’s kinda romantic --- uh, in a monster movie way. It’s also starting to become, director, Guillermo Del Toro’s (Pans Labyrinth) calling card. Unfortunately Del Toro’s deft hand isn’t laid upon the plot’s mechanics.
Hellboy 2 brings us back to it’s Tecate-drinking, red-skinned, gun-totting, supernatural-stomping main character/demon. Ron Pearlman plays the lead with such ease that it’s hard to imagine him without the make-up and prosthetics. Not so easy is Hellboy’s home life and work. This time, a disgruntled Elf prince wants to reclaim Earth from the humans, breaking a centuries-long agreement that humanity has forgotten about. Meanwhile, Hellboy’s beauty and the beast romance with, firestarter, Liz (Selma Blair) is even more challenging, not to mention the fact that she’s pregnant now…which I don’t even want to begin to think about).
Del Toro’s role in Hellboy is indispensible but I think he’s so conscious of and accurate at creating the comic book aesthetic that he kind of denies the film. It treads too carefully. For that reason, it lacks energy. This is most apparent in the scenes of exposition, the bits in-between where the plot expands and the character’s have to turn around (though there is a bonding moment between Hellboy and Abe that is quite funny).
While I wish more comic films would throw their imagination around as casually as this film does, I also wish Hellboy 2 wasn’t so much in it’s own head. It is the film’s only crime, really.
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