With the second Hellboy film currently in theatres it seems appropriate to take a look back at the first of Big Red’s big screen appearances, also directed by Guillermo del Toro.
The film opens towards the end of the Second World War on an island off the coast of Scotland. The Nazis are working with Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin to open a transdimensional portal to awaken the Seven Gods of Chaos to destroy their enemies and turn the course of the war which, by this stage, is going badly.
A small troop of American soldiers, accompanied by occult specialist Professor Thomas Bruttenholm, are sent to destroy this portal. Rasputin succeeds in opening the portal, but only for a moment, being sucked through the portal when it is destroyed.
The crisis has temporarily been averted but whilst the Seven Gods of Chaos did not make it through the portal in time a tiny, bright red demon child did. This child, with a right hand made of stone, is coaxed into Bruttenholm’s arms with a candy bar and becomes a mascot to the troop of soldiers who name him Hellboy.
The narrative then jumps forward sixty years to New Jersey where an elderly Bruttenholm heads up the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence. Hellboy is now an adult and is employed by the organisation but is not the only “unusual” employee of the Bureau. On his team is the psychic fish-like person, Abe Sapien and there is also a pyrokinetic woman, Liz Sherman, who is unable to control her ability.
When followers of Rasputin find a way to retrieve him from the demon Universe the world is once again under threat. Hellboy and his team must find a way to prevent him from reopening the portal and bringing about the apocalypse.
As you might expect from a Guillermo del Toro picture, Hellboy encounters a range of bizarre creatures from the Sammael, hellhounds with the ability to regenerate and multiply, to the creepy masked assassin that skulks around the city’s sewers. However none have the impact that the disturbing faun or pale man from Pan’s Labyrinth would do and the hellhounds become less impressive the more you see of them.
Much more successful are Hellboy and Abe Sapien, characters that are achieved through make-up and prosthetic techniques. However equally important are the acting performances from Ron Perlman and Doug Jones respectively (with David Hyde Pierce providing Abe’s voice, uncredited out of respect for Jones’ performance). They give their characters real personality and strong mannerisms to not only keep the characters from feeling ridiculous but also making them feel like the most “real” in the picture.
Hellboy is at its best during its set-up where the film mixes humour and some interesting character drama. It begins to lose its way with the introduction of the CGI monsters and slips into frustrating, tepid superhero fare as the climax nears. The ending offers far too few surprises, throwing even bigger (and less convincing) CGI at us.
The film’s greatest strength is its bizarre and intriguing characters. Hellboy himself is not exactly the model of a hero but his petulant, almost teenage strops and his lust for Liz make him an appealing lead. The film hints at the characters being caged birds, unable to do what or go where they want, yet it never develops that theme.
It is frustrating that the movie loses interest in the interplay of its characters and tries instead to deliver sensation. This film is good fun but it could easily have been much, much more.