Hellboy II: The Golden Army

[rating:4]
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones

In the summer of intense comic-book violence (see Wanted and The Incredible Hulk. Or don’t.), writer-director Guillermo Del Toro certainly holds up his end. The first half of Hellboy II: The Golden Army moves like you’ve accidentally sat on the fast forward button. Mystery, horror, whimsy, action, character moments all come at triple speed, almost always in imaginative settings with a dozen things going on in the background, and it’s to the film’s detriment that the audience rarely has enough time to actually process and enjoy any given scene. If we refer to key story moments as “beats,” then the first hour or so of this movie is a relentless drumroll. The result is that the audience has a harder time connecting to the story and the characters. It’s like we’re watching scenery whip past from the sterile interior of a bullet train, when what we want is to be out there walking with the characters, breathing the same air.

Still, even at high speed, the scenery is amazing. Del Toro creates an unforgettably gruesome twist on the Tooth Fairy in a demon-infested auction house, choreographing his fight scene with inventive brilliance that is just shy of too violent and too intense. The second Hellboy movie, much moreso than the first, is clearly from the same mind that created the brilliant Pan’s Labyrinth. Hellboy II is Pan’s Labyrinth on a case and a half of Red Bull.

Del Toro’s hypnotic film about a creepy, ruined world that brushes up against the Spanish Civil War seems set in the same world as this second Hellboy. That moody, bizarre banquet hall in Pan’s Labyrith could have Hellboy II‘s bustling nightmare of a troll market right outside its front door. The many fantastic and ugly creatures populating this film could be cousins to those young Ofelia meets in Franco’s Spain. It’s a fascinating metatextual experience to see so clearly the imagination and sensibilities of one mind applied to both thoughtful, melancholy fantasy and an absolute blockbuster punchup. But nobody ponies up ten bucks in the middle of July just to have to go look up “metatextual” when they get home, so it’s fortunate that Hellboy II delivers big-ass action, with much of the humor and humanity of the original picture.

Though he also weaves in character bits for demon-hunter Hellboy, merman sidekick Abe Sapien and moody pyrokinetic Liz Sherman, their personal stories don’t connect until the movie takes a deep breath and eases into its second half. To Del Toro’s credit—the screenplay is his, too, from a story with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola—he doesn’t do the same damn things with the characters. Where in the first movie, Hellboy mooned for the depressive Liz from afar, now we see different sides of them as they struggle to make their relationship work. And the sea-cold Abe is given a surprising shot of human warmth, even if it does lead him astray at a key moment.

That’s where a solid cast comes in. Ron Perlman nails Hellboy again, a weary,, wisecracking outsider who seems much more real than many a “human” action hero. He’s no Rambo, more like Die Hard‘s John McLean wrapped in twenty pounds of red latex body makeup. Selma Blair shows us a different side of Liz, but is still very much the same troubled girl from the first film. And master makeup actor Doug Jones gets to provide Abe’s voice this time (rather than Frasier Crane’s annoying brother), and that creates a better-integrated, more compelling performance suited to a film that gives Abe much more to do than in the first, where he got his ass kicked early and sat out the whole second half.

The first Hellboy was no box office champ (didn’t even break even domestically), and that we have this sequel at all is a credit to Del Toro’s passion for the comic books, and his increased Hollywood mojo after the success of Pan’s Labyrinth. His faith pays off here. When action films get a second outing, the goal is almost always to up the intensity. This film, fortunately, succeeds a la Aliens, rather than tanking in the style of Temple of Doom. The movie seems to prefigure a third installment that will deal decisively with Hellboy’s apparent destiny to be the Beast of the Apocalypse, harbinger of humanity’s destruction, which would be the most moving and complex chapter. This one’s sandwiched between that and the well-balanced establishing project of the first Hellboy, and if you can keep up, it’s a hell of ride.

Tags: action, comic book, guillermo del toro, hellboy