Hellboy (2004)

“I hate those comic books. They never get the eyes right.”

Filmology Rating: 2.75 out of 4

"Hellboy" was written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. He's a director that switches between the camps of art house auteur and mass entertainer and it has gone very well for him thus far.

This film stars Ron Perlman as Hellboy: the result of Nazi experiments as we see in the opening scene of the film in 1945. We then go forward to modern day (2004) and Hellboy is working for the government to deal with other threatening creatures, like himself, unbeknownst to the country as a whole. Some Nazis raise a new leader from a pool of blood for some reason and Hellboy must learn to work well with others; very generic cop movie cliches.

The plotting of the film itself, I believe, is meant to be ignored and accepted for what it is because the last twenty minutes of the film is something about a laser going into the sky to bring demon monsters to Earth on a solar eclipse because some Nazis want to? The plot is very scattershot and the villain does not help because he has as much to do as Grindelwald does in the recent "Fantastic Beasts" movie. Occasionally he'll show up and say "I am evil man" then disappear for half an hour until the end.

This is also a PG-13 film which doesn't work against the film, however, a film with this mad of a premise and character, there needs to blood. There just needs to. The new film is rated R, so hopes are high in the gore category.

Hellboy is portrayed wonderfully by Ron Perlman. He goes through an arc of his own where he learns to work better with others in his line of work and it is very cliche cop plotting, however, with a character this crazy, he needs to be grounded and relatable to audiences. I assume he is the main character, however, there is a young man named John Myers who, on paper, should have been the main character and Hellboy be the supporting character, but who cares about the human, it's called "Hellboy." So John is often sitting on the side watching Hellboy do all the cool stuff and he really is fat to be trimmed.

There is also a strange love triangle between Hellboy, John, and some girl who is there for one of the two guys to kiss at the end.

The other interesting part is seeing a film that utilizes CGI in its youth. It is very easy to recognize a film from the early 2000s because it has dated CGI and I'm sure in a decade or so, it will become a more recognizable trait of this period in film.

This film is a cliche cop film in a Hellboy vehicle with great style from a proven director and a lead performance that gives the film its edging charm.

Rating: See It

-Nolan