Faithfull to the comic and a fun ride!

Rating: 9/10 (13 April 2004)

Title: Hellboy (2004)
Cast: Ron Perman, John Hurt, Selma Blair,
Tagline: Here to Protect
Review:
Well after much anticipation (tell me about it!) I finally got to see Hellboy. Guillermo del Toros love child, Hellboy has been a project del Toro has been wanting to make since his Mimic days, so needles to say his love for Mike Mignolas comic book creation is preatty evident when you see the movie.
The story is about Hellboy. A demon from hell who was summoned here by a warlock called Rasputin. You see, old Rasputin wants to use Hellboys powers to bring forth these giant lovecraftian creatures from another dimension to bring destruction upon earth. Hellboy is not really willing to participate in this little escaped and therefore tries to stop Rasputin from achieving his goal.
Let me make this clear, first and foremost this movie is a monster movie. Its main thing is to showcase monsters and monsters fighting each other off. Its also a very very straight forward comic book movie so you can throw your credibility out the window when you see this one. Its got magic, monsters and talking dead corpses, so be ready for that. Now, does it succeed in what it set out to do? Heck yeah! Many times over.
The creatures on Hellboy are amazing...starting with the good guys. Hellboy himself is incredibly cool looking, I myself found that I could not turn away and stop looking at the screen. Hellboy was like a magnet to my eyes...I was glued to the screen!
Same thing when ever Abe Sapiens shows up...Dr. Brotenholm was talking but all I could do was check out how cool Abe looked. Very well achieved make up effects. Then theres the bad guys....the Sammael creatures...damn cool as hell. Those tentacles..those eyes! Those jaws! That whole scene in the subway! I was just salivating at how realistic the Sammeal creatures looked. This movie helped me realize how much I prefer live action prosthetics and monsters to cgi. Speaking of wich...the cgi was done well for the most part, but there where some scenes in there that I didnt love, but those where very few. For the most part the CG was excellent.
The action is non stop! Lots of chases, lots of fights! Hey this is a comicbook flick, we need our heroes and villains to duke it out a couple of times, and trust me my friends this happens a lot through out the flick.

Id heard a lot about the warmth and level of emotion that the movie puts across, and I agree theres a couple of moments that are really emotional. Like Hellboy and Liz's romantic sequences that little speach that Hellboy tells Liz is awesome! Ron Perlman succesfully managed to put a lot emotion into that performance even though he was under tons of make up. It was sort of like a flashback to his Beauty and the Beast days.
The bad, well there very few things I didnt like about this here flick...but there defenetly were a few hiccups along the way. The movie aint perfect. First off, Rasputin came off as weak. The way the script was written, theres no real conflict between the villain and the hero. Theres no actual physical conflict between them...therefore he comes of as weak. In the comic hes a more menacing and scary. Here it looked like Hellboy could defenetly kick his ass at any given moment. The character has the potential to be a great villain...but just not in this movie.
I was expecting a slightly more spectacular ending. It felt rushed, I liked the fx, and the creatures but the final final confrontation between hellboy and "the old gods" well it was just too fast...heck I wanted that bad monster to destroy the building, I wanted a bigger fight..but no. Listen up del Toro! For your next flick, pay attention to the importance of conflict between heroe and villain! I guess we can blame del Toro for letting that one slip since he did write the screenplay...so next time Guillermo: we want the major villain to sweat evil out of his every pore!
Well del Toro was wearing a lot of hats while making this movie, so I guess the film had to suffer somewhere. Speaking of del Toros direction. The man is a visual genius. He knows how to make the scenes look like works of art. Its all about the beautiful colors and textures! My hat goes off for making a truly beatiful comic book flick. It felt like I was seeing Mignolas drawings coming to life in many instances. Even the sets looked almost identical to the drawings found in Mignolas comics. In this visual sense and in many other ways this movie was incredibly faithful to the source material.
Theres a lot of winks for those comic fans out there...like those scenes with the corpse and even in one scene the humonculus shows up in a hallway of the BPRD, so be on the look out for little winks from del Toro all through out.
Ok putting those minor problems that I mentioned aside, the film rocked my ass to kingdom come. It was an amazing special effects/action/monster ride that had my fan boy ass drooling like a little kid waiting for the comics shop to open. Heck this movie put a smile in my geeky heart. Thanx del Toro, keep em coming dude!
Rating: 4 out of 5