Lionsgate
I saw Hellboy back when it came out in 2004 and I quite liked it. Weird fantasy and monster stuff, decent character stuff, an okay romance and Ron Perlman was great in the lead role. The follow-up sequel I found hackneyed, clichéd, and dull, despite beautiful visuals. To this day, I still do not get anyone that likes it more than the first one. All that together, I haven’t rewatched either in a decade or more. Perhaps it was time for a reboot after all.
Hellboy comes from Neil Marshall of some episodes of Game of Thrones and Westworld, and written by Andrew Cosby of mostly episodes of the show Eureka. It is a simple tale, with a lot of gore and a fairly pedestrian ending. The gore is a bit over the top (although often cartoonishly gross instead of horrifying), and the profanity relatively mild despite being used quite a bit. There is no nudity to speak of nor any sexual situations. But it’s not bad, honest.
David Harbour of Stranger Things fame plays the eponymous demon snarker, living in a world where he is a known and famous paranormal investigator instead of the whole ‘staying in the shadows’ old cliché. He still works for the BPRD, which investigates paranormal threats, and he still has a lot of complicated feelings with his harsh adopted father and head of the BPRD Professor Broom (Ian McShane).
Ian McShane has an absurd level of personality, and he is a delight at all moments he’s on screen, although this can be an issue when you’re supposed to be following the lead of Hellboy. David Harbour has a lot of presence in Stranger Things, but here he is often a bit muted, which often includes fairly boring jokes and snarky asides. At times he gets more energetic and those are the better moments, including one truly terrible pun at the end of the movie that made me laugh because of its utter stupidity.
Hellboy teams up in this movie with a girl he rescued from faeries named Alice (Sasha Lane), a kind of psychopomp or spiritual medium with an iffy CGI ghost power. This iffy bit is weird because in general the special effects work pretty well here, so Alice’s ghost trick (it will be clear when it happens) stands out as bad CGI. There is also the prickly policeman Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim), failing at a British accent, whose secret power has already been spoiled in the trailers.
His character is uninteresting and without much of any real impact to the story. The villain here is the fifth century evil witch Nimue (Milla Jovovich), extremely loosely based on the Arthurian legends. Nimue wants merely to destroy humanity and allow monsters and similar creatures to take over in their stead, and Hellboy has a role to play in it.
Hellboy’s arc is so simple, it might as well have been nothing at all, and Nimue isn’t particularly interesting beyond her ethereal presence and overpowered capabilities. Her characterization and motivation aren’t really fleshed out, but then again, the elves in Hellboy: The Golden Army were stupidly characterized too.
All that is fairly negative, yes, but the movie flows well, almost too quickly, and has many fun scenes and moments. The action has highs and lows, and the relationships between Hellboy and his pals is not as well done as with his father, but it is decent, R-rated light sort of thing. It is hardly elevated fare in the current realm of graphic novel adaptations, but I enjoyed myself despite all those issues.
Maybe these people who are so angry about this reboot/remake need to consider what they’re really angry about, because what’s the point in caring so much about Hellboy? It’s fine.
Hellboy has a run time of 2 hours 1 minute and is rated R for strong bloody violence and gore throughout, and language.
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