To Hell and back ...

Rating: 10/10 (26 March 2004)

Saw the film in L.A. at a special screening March 19th.
Well ... what can I say? I always knew this film was a labour of love for Del Toro, but I didn't really expect so much of it to show on film.
HELLBOY is an absolute joy to watch. Not being a comic-book fan to begin with, I really had no pre-conceived ideas about the film, but boy ... it blew me away. A lot of the shots were pure Mignola, and Guillermo Navarro's luscious photography caresses the screen. Dark blues, bronzes, golds ... and the startling, living red of Hellboy himself.
The cast is magnificent. Ron Perlman IS Hellboy ... a gruff, bad-ass, cigar-smoking demon with a big heart and the gauchness of a teenager when it comes to Liz Sherman, the pyrokinetic young lady he adores from afar. No one else could have played him, and thank God - THANK GOD - Guillermo del Toro held out and stubbornly determined to use Perlman as his lead. Inspired casting indeed.
The rest of the cast is also bang-on ... John Hurt is uncanny as Professor Bruttenholm (pronounced 'Broom'), and Jeffrey Tambor and Rupert Evans are both a delight. Doug Jones is the 'fish-guy', Abe Sapien, and his fluid, balletic grace and quirky performance brings Abe to the big screen brilliantly. Let's have more of Abe in the sequel, if we get one? (and I bet we do ...).
Go see Hellboy. It's a great popcorn movie, weird, funny, quirky and utterly charming. There are fantastic fight sequences, lots of dry, hilarious one-liners, some great bad guys and as strange a bunch of heroes as you're likely to meet - and you'll love 'em to bits.