Better than its peers

Rating: 8/10 (19 May 2008)

Hellboy is about a demon who works for the FBI. The plot is generic, bad guys want to unleash Armageddon, good guys must stop them. But what this movie lacks in originality it makes up for in every other department..
Hellboy is genuinely fun and Guillermo Del Toro's eye for good composition makes a movie about a hideous brute, actually very beautiful. The action is well paced; the characters are shallow yet eccentric and interesting. One of my main problems with similar comic book movies is how the makers swamp the screen with enough CGI to sink the Titanic, and throw action sequences at the audience in the hope that some may stick in the mind of Joe Cinema-goer for longer than half a minute. Hellboy didn't have the uber-budget of a Spiderman (a franchise that bores me beyond belief) but Del Toro spent his pennies wisely and all the CGI effects are effective, seamless and limitedly spectacular.
Ron Perlman is excellent as Hellboy; his presence enriches the hero with a sense and genuine power and subtle, childlike wit. There are not many layers to the characters for the viewer to slowly unravel, each character plays to type (the scientist, love interest, annoying boss and so on) but the supporting cast all perform admirably. John Hurt helps the story progress with a fair amount of exposition and Jeffery Tambor is funny-bordering-on-hilarious as Hellboy's insecure and incompetent boss. Also David Hyde Pierce of 'Frasier' fame is perfectly cast as a clairvoyant talking fish.
The bad guys are a sight to behold; Rasputin is menacing but underutilised, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen (aka the gas mask wearing, knife wielding, gimp) is a grotesque creation and perfectly re-created from the rich source material of the comics.
Overall, Hellboy is a smaller movie than its peers, and it's all the better for it