director/screenwriter
Guillermo del Toro
story by
Guillermo
del Toro
Peter Briggs
based on
the comic book by
Mike Mignola
producers
Lawrence Gordon
Lloyd Levin
Mike Richardson
cinematographer
Guillermo Navarro
music
Marco Beltrami
editor
Peter Amundson
cast
Ron Perlman (Hellboy)
Selma Blair (Liz Sherman)
Jeffrey Tambor (Dr. Tom Manning)
Karel Roden (Grigori Rasputin)
Rupert Evans (John Myers)
John Hurt (Prof. Bruttenholm)
Corey Johnson (Agent Clay)
Doug Jones (Abe Sapien)
Biddy Hodson (Ilsa)
David Hyde Pierce (voice, Abe Sapien)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 120m
u.s.
release: April 2, 2004
video
availability: TBA
official
website
other guillermo
del toro films
reviewed on this website:
- blade
II
- mimic
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Ron Perlman has made a career
out of projecting humanity through latex -- the closest he's
come to mainstream stardom was his starring role on TV's Beauty
and the Beast -- and Hellboy could almost be his doctoral
thesis. Carrying a $66 million fantasy-adventure, Perlman, at
age 53, strides in like a hungry young actor itching to prove
something, only with 22 years of experience lending him charisma
and confidence. It's a star-making performance, full of surly
wit and understated pathos, and should qualify him for high-profile
roles without make-up (I still remember with pleasure his unadorned
work in 1995's The Last Supper).
Aside from Perlman, Hellboy
is a fun if rather cluttered affair. As directed by Guillermo
del Toro, it's a bottomless bowl of eye candy, but you know what
they say about too much candy. Del Toro, a genuinely gifted filmmaker,
has shown us two faces: In his native Mexico, he crafts subtle
and original horror dramas (Cronos, The Devil's Backbone);
in Hollywood, he has a little too much fun with the pricey toys
(Blade
II and the abortive Mimic,
which its studio Miramax diddled with). Hellboy falls
somewhere in between -- it has moments of inspiration, and you
can feel del Toro's glee in working on a large-scale comic-book
canvas. Still, I prefer del Toro's smaller works; it's the difference
between a nice tray of sushi and a tub of popcorn -- both suit
a particular mood, but del Toro prepares sushi too well to settle
for popping popcorn.
Hellboy (Perlman) is a demon,
brought here through an interdimensional portal during World
War II and raised by paranormal expert Professor Bruttenholm
(John Hurt); he works for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and
Defense, sniffing out otherworldly nasties and eliminating them.
The idea, by way of Mike Mignola's comic book of the same name,
smacks of a zillion movies (and comics), and the movie's plot
-- Hellboy and various other BPRD recruits pursue the still-living
Rasputin (Karel Roden) and his cohorts, who want to hand the
world over to Lovecraftian evil gods -- is essentially unsurprising.
The film unavoidably becomes a string of set pieces wherein Hellboy
faces off against some many-tentacled monster or another, and
there's much pulp-movie posturing (the bad guys aren't just occult
villains, they're Nazis) and special-effects wizardry
that might feel more magical if we didn't suspect the art had
peaked with the Lord
of the Rings series.
Del Toro also tries to make
room for a love story between Hellboy (who, deep down, is a big
softy -- he loves kittens, for instance, and seems to keep dozens
of them in his quarters) and a pyrokinetic loner named Liz (Selma
Blair, taking on the difficult task of playing a woman who's
drugged out of most emotion for the bulk of the movie). A sequence
in which Liz goes out for coffee with a BPRD newbie (Rupert Evans),
while a jealous Hellboy hops from roof to roof following them,
feels both necessary and unnecessary: It certainly doesn't move
the plot (or what passes for it) forward, but it shows us a different
side of Hellboy, particularly when he sits and listens, not especially
patiently, to the advice of a nine-year-old boy on the subject
of unrequited love.
Bits like that made me wish
the whole movie could've been about Hellboy and Liz, and how
their relationship might (or might not) work. Del Toro achieves
a formidable lyricism towards the end, when the demon (who is
fireproof) and the fiery woman join in a kiss, enveloped by pulsing
blue flame. Most of Hellboy, though, is preoccupied with
the stuff that too many fanboy dreams are made of -- bashing
and explosions and spooky-nasty zombie Nazis with blades that
cut through stone. Guillermo del Toro can do this stuff with
more ease than many Hollywood hacks, but at some level it's still
hackwork -- a Saturday-matinee escapist cruddiness compromises
its power as a visionary fantasy. Del Toro may be one of those
directors who work better on lower budgets: Hellboy at
best is entertaining, but del Toro has been, and can be, more
than a studio-financed magician pulling expensive rabbits out
of expensive hats.
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