As another film adaption of a comic, Hellboy has a lot in common with Ang Lee’s Hulk in terms of its worthy interesting character studies, a central family of heroes facing strong internal and external struggles, and well-paced action sequences. Not content with being a less-focused CGI spectacle like Van Helsing or LXG (two films that tread water when it comes to plotting), Hellboy is a wholly satisfying viewing experience filled with nuance, emotion and a fast-moving, sharp script. While it has the potential to be crushed under the weight of expectation and hype, thankfully it lives up to repeat viewings.

In Depth
As a little known comic book (usually found in the corner of extra expensive trades at your local comic book store), Hellboy begins in 1944 with the Nazis making one final attempt at world domination by attempting to bring the literal Hell on earth via a portal in a wet rainy part of Scotland. In a curious mix of Indiana Jones Nazis and Buffy/Angel hellmouth accessorising, the infamous mad monk Grigori Rasputin (Karl Roden) sets about to invite the Seven Gods of Chaos from hell to a tea party with Hitler. But Professor Trevor Broom (head of the secret Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense), with proper British accent and a Giles stutter, leads a team to halt Rasputin’s portal-opening activity. Wearing his own electronic right-hand of doom to zap open a portal that Sliders only wish it had a budget for, Rasputin is presumably killed (has the life sucked out of him, literally) when the military attack and the only thing to come through the portal is a red bouncing baby with a huge contrete right-arm. Professor Broom names him Hellboy (HB for short throughout the remainder of the film) and raises him as own son.

Jump ahead sixty years and Hellboy (Ron Perlman) lives at the Bureau and is part of a special anti-monster operations team including aging Professor Broom (John Hurt), telepathic Mer-Man Abe Sapien (Doug Jones miming for David Hyde Pierce who provides the voice), pyro-kinetic Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) and FBI agent Myers (Rupert Evans). Like Buffy and Angel, Hellboy fights the latest demon to cross over into our world while contending with a frought personal life. Unlike Buffy and Angel, because of Hellboy’s appearance (huge and red with a tail and shaved horns), he doesn’t get out much and is largely hidden from the public eye. So, when he is not fighting the powers of evil, he is eating pancakes and pizza, drinking beer, smoking cigars, has a thing for kittens (for a moment I thought he ate them) and he is in love with Liz Sherman. Despite his intimidating appearance, Hellboy’s a normal guy who, between some serious anti-demon action (and there’s nothing like having a train drive over you to the point of burning your horns), still manages to wear his heart on his sleeve. But all is not well at the Bureau. Liz Sherman is in a psychiatric ward for overcooking her neighbours, Hellboy is grounded for making too many public appearances, Professor Broom is dying and his nemesis from the pre-title sequence (Rasputin) has been resurrected (during a visually arresting scene in the artic) who plans on finished the evil scheme he started sixty years ago — namely to use the right-arm of Satan’s Son (Hellboy) to bring forth the apocalypse. Dispatched to deal with the appearance of a hideous tentacled monster, Hellboy, Broom, Abe, Liz and Agent Myers are our only hope as they battle these forces of darkness.

Hellboy is based on mike Mignola’s Dark Horse comic of the same title, yet thankfully you don’t need to be familiar with the comic in order to enjoy the film. I’m quite the reverse actually – I had not heard of the comic till the film was first released overseas (six months before Australia — what’s with that?!) and now having seen it, I’m curious to read more. All in all, Hellboy had the potential to be as disappointing an endeavour as League of Extraordinary Gentemen (a film that has a questionable concept of plot devlopment) but it manages to avoid League’s pitfalls through Guillermo del Toro’s (Blade 2, Mimic) firm handling of the pacing and action-packed story.

Del Toro brings Hellboy to life with excellent acting (Ron Perlman just chews the scenery, thankfully the only choice after the studios suggested Vin Diesel!), dry humour, well-realised effects (forget Van Helsing and LCG, there is some sense of normal physics taking place in some of the bigger impactful sequences), loads of cinematic eye-candy, Darth Vader-like Nazis (complete with mask and breathing apparatus) and a strong exploration of the father/son relationship between Broom and Hellboy. It has the gritty dark edges of Underworld and Blade 2, a plot as epic as the Justice League’s Secret Origins feature film, Selma Blair playing her version of Firestarter in silky pajamas, and Ron Perlman doing what he does best: creature feature. Marco Beltrami provides the soundtrack score and happily makes his mark (finally) on the map of contemporary film music composers. After some mixed work on the Scream, Mimic and Blade 2, it is very promising to hear a score that is original in both theme and timbre, and thankfully not like the Alan Silvestri, Trevor Jones or Hans Zimmer wallpaper being peddled currently as film music (can you tell the difference between The Mummy Returns, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Van Helsing? Or The Rock and King Arthur?). Somewhere between Danny Elfman’s thematically rich Hulk, Elliot Goldenthal’s Batman Forever, Jerry Goldsmith’s use of French horns (in almost every recent film) and the eccleciticism of an Ennio Morricone score (I’m thinking The Untouchables), sits Marco Beltrami’s music to Hellboy. It’s no John William’s Prisoner of Azkaban but it is nonetheless an orchestrally rich and memorable score. For soundtrack buffs, I would absolutely recommend it.

Suffice to say, as there are so many comic-to-movie adaptions these days, for me Hellboy is one of the top seven superhero movies of all time, up there with Superman the Movie, Blade 2, Underworld (the director’s cut I think is one of the best extended editions of any film available), X-Men and X2 and Hulk (Spiderman doesn’t quite make it into this list due to its Power Rangers feel of masks talking to masks; and while Spiderman 2 avoids this particular problem, it does so by padding the mise-en-scene with more frowning shots of Mary Jane and after three films of Frodo pining over that ring of his, I’ve seen enough frowning for a while).