Disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (5 August 2004)

Okay, I'll start with something nice: Hellboy has great special effects, and fine performances from Perlman, Hurt, Tambor, and Pierce/Jones.

Okay, I ran out of nice things to say.
I'm a fan of comics and comic book movies, though the Hellboy comic has pretty much been off my radar. So I was looking forward to this movie. But I wound up disappointed for a lot of reasons. Let me list them...

Villains: action movies need strong villains. This one gives us three (four if you count the monster)--and we don't really get to know any of them, though one does some nifty knife tricks. But what's their motivation? Hurt's character says they want to destroy the world. Why? Don't they get destroyed along with it? Sorry, but I could NOT understand WHY the bad guys are trying to do what they're trying to do.

Heroes: all the good guys seemed to be plucked straight out of the stock character catalog. We have the world-weary lone wolf cop (Hellboy) to kick @$$ and crack wise, the intellectual (Abe) to explain the plot devices, the sage old man (Hurt) to explain the backstory, and the cranky boss (Tabmor) to be a pain in the butt. They're dressed up differently, but we've seen these characters a hundred times before, and in much better versions.

Lovers: if the casting director was trying to find two extremely bland actors to match the bloodless characters of John Myers and Liz Sherman in the screenplay, he/she succeeded wildly. Hurt says he picked Myers specifically; why? Hellboy asks him what he's good at. We're never told or shown satisfactory answers. And what HB or Myers see in the morose, wan, and seemingly eternally-sedated Liz is beyond me. Not only is Blair not a good actress, she isn't even attractive.

Dialogue: Hellboy has a few good lines, yes, but when you're able to fit them all in the trailer, you know you're in trouble. And the lack of interesting dialogue only highlights the lacklustre...

Plot: Like many current action movies, Hellboy's creators make the mistake of assuming that action and effects are plot. They're not. The story shuffles along aimlessly; even the characters seem clueless about how to proceed. If Rasputin and his sidekicks are such a threat, why are they wasting time with the big hellhound-thingy? This isn't a plot, it's an excuse for a series of action set-pieces.

When a movie can't come up with decent basic elements like the ones I just listed, all the special effects and whiz-bang action won't keep it afloat. It's too bad, because del Toro et al managed to show you can put together an effects-laden action flick at a much lower price than anyone would have thought.