A Hell of Untold Taming

Rating: 4/10 (7 July 2004)

Cinematic clichÃ©s can be tolerated if, at the very least, they bring to the fore some kind of extra added value, but with Hellboy the hackneyed core stands alone, bare and raw, for world audiences to see. Sad for them.
Another aspiring blockbuster very much akin to recent Van Helsing, HB's roots lie in, surprise surprise, comic books, and perhaps those thus aligned will glean some pleasure out of beholding this particularly tepid big screen adaptation. Unfortunately, unless you happen to be a fan of the source material, Guillermo del Toro's subpar product holds no enticement whatsover. Minimal, often insultingly poor, special effects and a story that wasn't original even before Raiders of the Lost Ark came out deprive the film of any serious potential, while its cast deploy disheartening letdowns in the performance department. Ron Perlman, long among Hollywood's leading choices for monster roles, and usually excellent, but now virtually absent John Hurt both suffer from not enough script and too much fluff as obstructions to proper execution. Perlman steps in a fallen demon child, born in our reality as a result of nefarious Nazi experiments in dark magic.
This Hellboy grows up to become a special agent for a counter-paranormal crime agency led by Prof. Bruttenholm (Hurt). Of course there's a few sidekicks and comic reliefs, like fish person Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), mentally supercharged love interest Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), and all-human FBI rookie John Myers (Rupert Evans). All of the above, even when put together, fail to generate any bonafide excitement. They can't even sustain a palpable interest level in the movie's lackluster proceedings, which soon degrade into trite "good vs. evil" rhetoric addled with CGI of a standard that wasn't eyepopping in The Faculty all those moons ago. Scant few action sequences, miserly use of one-liners and come-backs (now, what's a decent action flick without those?), as well as characters you can't quite get to caring about prevent Hellboy from reaching those higher, more rewarding planes of achievement. Or anyone in attendance from avoiding a rather placid kind of sleep.
Its only saving grace may be the somewhat entertaining villains, especially Ladislav Beran as ghoulish, coolly masked foe Kroenen, and Karel Roden as a funkier version of Rasputin, the evil (and now oddly undead) monk. This overall lack of appeal comes as a bit of a shock since, through respectable projects like Mimic and Blade 2, Director del Toro has proven himself a competent genre artisan. Perhaps next time round they'll get it right. Yes, there's a sequel coming. Whoop tee doo. Through visuals inferior to some video game titles now on the market, listless storytelling and protagonists that would obviously prefer to stay home and lounge rather than combat evil, Hellboy results in a tame product not worthy of its own infamy. Plus it's PG-13. Yuck.
Rating: * 1/2