Uninspired for the most part

Rating: Null/10 (19 April 2004)

Hellboy kind of sleepwalks through a thousand old comic-book cliches, and doesn't really introduce anything new or refreshing to the genre. The story skips over 60 years of the title character's life, and makes no effort at all to explain what may have happened in that period to shape a demon into U.S. government agent. Needless to say, the World War II origin scene was the most inspired, and a better movie may have been lurking in the years that shaped Hellboy, not the end product. What we are left with is Ron Perlman as a semi-ticked off, cigar chomping brute who non-chalantly dispatches his opponents and shows little to no concern about any danger that awaits him or others. If you read comics as a kid (or now), you know this covers roughly a quarter of the Marvel roster. Hellboy's cohorts are nothing special either, Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) is almost a direct knock-off of Charlie McGee in Firestarter (we get no background on their romance), and John Myers (Rupert Evans) just sort of reacts to his partner's destructive tendencies. The only interesting characters to me were Professor Broom (John Hurt) as Hellboy's "father", and undead Nazi assassin Kroenen (Karel Roden). The action scenes were pretty standard, typical CGI stuff. I did like the fact that an actor portrayed Hellboy, and he wasn't computer-generated. That makes the movie much more watchable. Just don't be surprised if you've completely forgotten about this movie 2 hours after you've left the theatre.