Exceptional action, special effects and humor!

Rating: 8/10 (13 July 2008)

I loved this movie! It's the best action-adventure I've seen this year, more entertaining and satisfying than Indiana Jones 4, Iron Man, Hulk 2 or Speed Racer. I'm not a Hellboy fan of any kind. I don't remember much about the first movie, except that I thought it was passable entertainment. It looked great but the story seemed a bit clunky and the action scenes weren't as structured and well-paced as I like. I had no desire to watch it again any time soon. Hellboy 2 is on another level entirely. This one I can't wait to get on DVD and watch again.
The best thing about Hellboy 2 is that it captured some of the rare magic of those great genre mashups, Ghostbusters and Men in Black. It follows much more in the tradition of those films than anything from the superhero genre. It had the clever mix of science fiction, fantasy, horror, action and comedy that made those movies such entertaining blends. These movies are very hard to pull off, as the terrible sequels to MIB and GB demonstrated, even though they were made by virtually the exact same people. There was a point in Hellboy 2 when I realized you could have easily substituted the Ghostbusters in for the "paranormal investigators" in this film (you have the cynical one, the intellectual one, the emotional one and the common sense one), and not had to change much else about the film to make the story work. In this case the comparison is a well-deserved one. Although comedy is not the focus of Hellboy 2, the contrasting characters were clearly designed to work as a comedic team. There are many good laughs intermingled with the action of this film, often provided by Hellboy's deadpan reactions to the insane events happening around him.
The action scenes of Hellboy 2 are exceptional, perfectly paced and masterfully staged, blowing away anything we saw from Hulk and especially Iron Man. They're as good as the best Indy 4 action scenes but here you get a whole movie full of them (an early scene involving little man-eating creatures is coincidentally similar to Indy 4's most exciting scene). There are no over-stylized sequences where you feel like a director is trying to pump up a standard fight scene with meaningless camera action. Del Toro only uses camera and editing flourishes to smartly enhance and emphasize key dramatic moments in his scenes. The villains of Hellboy 2 make for particularly effective threats. There are times, reminiscent of past great action epics like Terminator 2, where you simply can't figure out how the heroes could possibly defeat them. That's a terrific way to make you identify with the heroes, adding an important psychological element to the battles. You are not just watching a spectacle but you feel like you're inside the action. You're not just emotionally concerned for the characters but also intellectually trying to figure out what they're going to do next.
Del Toro shows similar deftness in his handling of the movie's special effects. There isn't any gratuitous or overdone CGI, like the entire Mummy 3 trailer seems to consist of. It seems like Del Toro tries to use practical effects as often as feasible, only using CGI where necessary. The uses of different effects techniques seem to blend seamlessly here. Audiences actually seem to be having trouble distinguishing where the physical effects end and the CGI begins. I'm not a knee-jerk CGI basher, but I do dislike bad CGI just like I do any bad special effects. Speaking of which, both Hulk movies would have been better if they had the kind of special effects quality control on the Hulk that Del Toro demonstrates on every single one of his numerous creatures in this movie.
The cast of characters in Hellboy 2 is a wonder to behold. Based on this movie, Del Toro ought to be drafted to direct the new Masters of the Universe film. Here you have a similar blending of characters seemingly inspired by every pre-existing work of science fiction, fantasy, fairy tales, classic creature features, pro-wrestling, you name it. There are elves, fairies, trolls, robots, ghosts, tiny critters, giant monsters, shape-shifters and creatures made of rock, plant, air and wood. You even have a guy with a zany rocket-launching metal fist that looks like something straight off of a He-Man action figure. Yet none of this ever becomes overwhelming, confusing or over-the-top. There is an efficiency to how Del Toro shows you what you need to understand about his universe without wasting time on unnecessary exposition. He respects your intelligence and has faith in your imagination.
Hellboy 2 is ultimately an action and special-effects extravaganza. You shouldn't go in expecting great character development or subtle messages about the problems in today's world. There is a solid central plot that drives the movie from beginning to end, stemming from the villains and their dastardly, imaginative scheme to take over the world, just when you thought there weren't any more original ones to be thought of. All the main characters have clearly defined physical and personality traits that add color to the movie. But as far as the personal lives of the characters go, they are dealt with in a handful of smaller, mostly perfunctory subplots (that interconnect with the main plot at key moments). This movie isn't on the level of, say, Spider-Man 2 or Batman Begins where you could remove all the action scenes and still have a great character story. The main purpose the quieter, dialogue-driven scenes serve in this movie seems to be to give you a breather between the many big action scenes. But those scenes are so spectacular that it's unlikely you'll find yourself wishing the movie was any different. This is an excellent entertainment in a year that so far has mostly provided only so-so ones. Hellboy 2 is the science-fiction-fantasy-horror-action-comedy that you may not have known you were waiting for.