THE HEAT IS ON FOR REVOLUTION'S "HELLBOY" ...

Rating: Null/10 (31 March 2004)

Faithfully based on Mike Mignola's Dark Horse Comics series, fans will be all fired up over director Guillermo del Toro's "HELLBOY" and his 'homage' to weird-war comic books, the chest-burster scene in "Alien", a tentacled thing causing "Predator 2" havoc on a subway, a bug-eyed, deaths-head villain that wheezes like 'Darth Vader' and a 'Baby Ruth' munching, ugly little monster, that grows up into a beer-swilling, ugly, big monster.
Ron Perlman is the 'Hot Stuff' actor here, a domesticated 'good' demon, whose job is to knock the hell out of the 'evil' ones. Referred throughout the film as either 'HB' or 'Red', Perlman's performance, while relying on the 'Ben Grimm' school of droll one-liners, is also surprisingly human for an entity from the 'other side'. Whether HB is power-sanding down his twin 'horn' stubs, slicing and dicing infernal creatures with a Conan-like frenzy, or making out with his fire-brand of a lady, Perlman allows his character to remain strong and likeable throughout many surreal and violent action sequences.
Other entertaining performances include dependable John Hurt as HB's mentor 'father', Selma Blair as the waifish 'Liz' (who has the emotional capacity to take charge of almost any situation) and Doug Jones as the scaled-down CGI 'Abe Sapien', a chatty C3PO fish out of water.
If you have a burning desire to see the latest comic book movie, then you should go straight to "HELLBOY" ...______________________________________________________