This was made by Guillermo del Toro?

Rating: 5/10 (6 July 2010)

First, this is not science-fiction, it's blatantly fantasy. I am not a comic-book reader, so I had no experience with this universe prior to the film.
As a film, it was pretty good. When I say "as a film", I'm addressing it as nothing more than a piece of entertaining cinema, like the Back to the Future series, anything Hellraiser, or Fantasia. As entertainment, I'm not looking for anything metaphorical or metaphysical. The presence of deep-seated questions doesn't ruin a film, but they shouldn't distract me from it. Cases in point: Event Horizon, Robots.
For Hellboy, I suspended judgement of the film based on the title because superstitious terminology and imagery are ubiquitous and unavoidable throughout most of the world and literary history. Besides, Hellraiser, even using such a fantastic and superstitious title, doesn't bring excessive religious ideology into the film.
I'll spare appeals to the idea of this film being religiously alienating because of the main character, as the ideas of "devil" and "hell" are concepts that have been propagated through literature for thousands of years. What angers me most is the devotion to the idea that one can only be "human" through Christianity. This is outrageous, insulting, belittling... there aren't words sufficient to describe how offensive it is to discriminate against someone based on their superstitions. Racism is low, sexism is low, classism is low, implied discrimination based purely on religious views is truly despicable.
I had no interest in this film until I noticed it on Guillermo del Toro's IMDb page. Maybe I missed something in his other work, or maybe I'm expecting too much from him, but I won't be jumping at his other films with the kind of zeal that I did before.