Review

Review Date: 4-April-04
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Hellboy (2004)

The weather here on the West Coast has been gorgeous for weeks, so it feels right to find Hollywood getting a jump on summer with "Hellboy," an all-out, whizz-bang, heckuva good time that fully justifies forsaking sunshine for a darkened theater. The newest comic book adaptation for the big screen provides a potent mix of action, fantasy, wit, and sentiment that marvelously illustrates why stories about dark knights, mysterious champions, and underdogs never die.

The movie starts strongly with a sequence initiating newcomers (like myself) to the origins of Hellboy. On a remote Scottish island during World War II, a young professor leads a squadron of American soldiers to stop a Nazi-sponsored ritual that will introduce the demons of Chaos to Earth. The Americans succeed in thwarting this evil plan, but not before one demon crosses over from his world into ours: an infant with red skin and an oversized hand, who is promptly adopted by the professor. After the opening credits the action shifts to modern day, where we meet this creature again through the eyes of an FBI rookie (Rupert Evans) recruited by the aging professor (John Hurt) to take over as Hellboy's advisor. Now entering the prime of life at 60, Hellboy (Ron Perlman) is a top-secret agent who specializes in destroying paranormal disturbers of the peace. Lonely, grumpy, and embarrassed by his demonness, he spends the off hours pining for his human sweetheart Liz (Selma Blair), who has left the FBI in search of a way to control her unfortunate habit of combusting when agitated. In her absence, Hellboy's chief companion is Abe Sapiens, a fishlike humanoid with telepathic powers (body by Doug Jones, voice by David Hyde Pierce). The bulk of the movie depicts the testing of these characters' strengths and loyalties after an old nemesis comes back to reclaim Hellboy for the demon world.

Studios have a lot of superheroes on the payroll these days, and a lot of technology to back them up, but few directors have translated their comic-geek passion into a film with as much richness as Hellboy. Writer/director Guillermo del Toro clearly loves not only his subject's angst and badassness, but the texture of his world, the ties he has to history, and (to quote from the movie) the qualities that make him a man. With a seriousness reminiscent of Joss Whedon, he makes everything in Hellboy's life seem real, from the drama, to the humor, to the occult mythology. Although he initially relies on the story's most normal character to draw in the audience (much as the professor lures little Hellboy with a Baby Ruth), before long we don't need something safe and recognizable to hold on to, because the vast, shadowy, and agreeably old-fashioned cosmos has become our own. So much so that the many familiar elements of "Hellboy" play like well-chosen allusions to classic fantasy (e.g., an assassin with Darth Vader overtones) instead of unimaginative recycling (though a limp love triangle flirts with staleness).

Above all, del Toro and Perlman make Hellboy himself real, and this is the clincher of the film. Like others of his ilk (Wolverine from "X-Men" springs to mind), he's sardonic, humbled by love, and chafed by his origins, but he doesn't appear to suffer from the rage of the anguished soul; in fact, his feelings of alienation conceal a remarkable degree of placid self-awareness (now Shrek springs to mind). Bigger and potentially scarier than most characters, good or bad, Hellboy is a hero in the broader sense of the word, the kind of guy who saws off his own horns in a vain attempt to fit in and yet maintains a fondness for kittens and the phrase "Oh, crap." (Plus, he has a tail, and that's just cool.) To fans of escapism who like their defenders to carry some personal, historical, and mythical weight as well as a really big gun, my advice is to go straight to "Hellboy."

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.