Colourful yet grim fantasy tale

Rating: Null/10 (5 March 2014)

Here's a fantasy film, a comic book adaptation actually, that isn't afraid to fully commit to its world. The world of Hellboy is a strange, multilayered and bizarre combination of influences from Christian mythology to Russian history to weird pulp science fiction. Yet under Guillermo del Toro's direction it all takes shapes and starts to make sense. The world is never explained in detail, like in some other superhero films. We never get to know where most of the weirdness comes from or what it really means in the grand scheme of things, but it all feels like it has a purpose. It feels real within the realm of the film.
So what's the story. There lives a demon, the eponymous Hellboy (Ron Perlman), who was brought to Earth during World War Two by Rasputin (Karel Roden), who was working for Hitler at the time - but of course he was - but who was taken in and raised by an American professor Trevor Broom (John Hurt) when his group of Alliance soldiers helped to stop Rasputin. But now Hellboy must face his original enemy and learn who he really is. It is an outlandish tale and the film is brave enough to not beat around the bush with it. It doesn't try to modernize the character, it doesn't try to make it more sleek and current. It's good, old-fashioned geeky story and damn proud of it.
The reason why I didn't rate the film any higher is that I think the central story would have been fine as it it. It would have been strong enough to work as a pure adventure film. Unfortunately the plot is diluted by needless side characters and their story arcs and the connections to Hellboy's own arc. Take for instance John Myers (Rupert Evans), who gets transferred to Hellboy's unit from FBI. He's the audience surrogate, there to allow other characters to explain things to him. Yet the thing is that the film doesn't really need an audience surrogate. It's a complex world, but as I said earlier, del Toro's directing is strong enough to explain the world through other means. Surprisingly little is explained through Myers, making him absolutely pointless. Then there's the director of the unit, the various agents, other "freaks" of the unit, various bad guys and so on. I get that most of them are from the original comic books. It makes sense that they wanted to include them in the film. It just pains me, because there's such a good adventure plot, which gets buried beneath all the establishing scenes when the film tries to cram in yet another character. Plus there's a romance subplot, because of course there is...
If I'm being completely honest with myself, I have to admit that my dislike for this film is more than little irrational. Objectively looking it's a fine film. The main leads are very strong in their roles, the film looks great even today and the mythos is especially intriguing. I just can't reconcile with myself about what I want this film to be and what it actually is. If you're a fan of gritty adventures, comic book movies or full and detailed fantasy worlds, then I'd give this one a watch.