Obvious potential wasted

Rating: 4/10 (25 August 2007)

Hellboy revolves around classic comic book/action/superhero genre story lines. Essentially Hellboy is a kind of demon who has found his way on earth. He is brought up from a child by a priest and within a government society and has chosen to protect the people of earth from the supernatural, rather then be a menace (the normal career route for a demon).
The set up of the story involves creative uses of history, combining Nazi experiments with the occult. It's preposterous, but so is the whole idea of a demon roaming the streets. I find the explanations of the characters, who they are and how they came to be very well handled. The sequences are to the point and very entertaining. In fact the opening is the best part of the film, therein lays the problem.
Essentially Del Toro who both writes and directs this piece bottles it. The film is absent of all tension or any major conflict. Hellboy is essentially established as invincible within the first act and so the rest of the film comprises of scenes in which any conflict is automatically rather crass because we know inevitably Hellboy will be OK and the bad guy will die. I hear you cry that this is the case for any action/hero film. Well yes it is, but once we are drawn into a well made action film we can't help but feel the hero may die. Die Hard works because John Mclane looks likely to die at all parts. He escapes death by the slimmest of margins. The stakes are raised as his wife is also in danger etc etc Terminator and Terminator two work because in both cases the villain is far superior than the hero. The threat and tension is constant.
Some of the other major weaknesses are: Del Toro is also guilty of employing deus ex machina. Characters generally disappear and reappear as their skills are needed within the story. The villain is featured in maybe three scenes. He has no motives. Turns up unexpectedly and inexplicably. In the one scene Hellboy looks to be up against a real threat (groups of monsters) a character unleashes her abilities - the screen fades to white and inexplicably the monsters are dead but everybody else lives. A minor character established in an irritating and undeveloped love story becomes the key to the conclusion of the film. Her character is so thin, the relationship so undeveloped. It is clear she is nothing more than a prop of sorts to push the plot along and to make it all make sense. I don't want to ruin the ending of the film but essentially a character that is dead is miraculously and unbelievably brought back to life.
The film suffers from poor dialogue and one liners that just aren't smart or funny. After a while it all starts to grate.
What's more Del Toro blows the action scenes with some uninspired visuals. And whoever made the creative decision to make hellboy's primary weapon a gun instead of his clunking arm should be fired. Essentially the use of the gun weakens the concept of the film, degrading the fights to nothing more than a one sided shoot out
The few positives include: The cinematography is very good. At all times a sense of mood is established by the dark lighting and the darker colour palette. As well as the use of interesting locations. Yet perhaps it is all a bit samey as well.
The use of cgi and Fx is well done. Never do we get an over load. When effects are used they are used well and the sense of realism is kept. Rather similar to how Nolan used FX in batman. I much prefer this method to the overtop effects we often see.
All in all this is a pretty poor film. The real shame is that (despite not reading the comics) I found the film wasted a lot of potential. Hellboy as a character has a lot of instantly apparent fascinating dimensions which are completely unexplored. The film has watch-ability, in the sense that if it comes on TV and nothing else is on it might be worth a viewing. But in any other situation I wouldn't bother with it.