"Hellboy 2:The Golden Army" is one of those rare sequels these days that is better than the original.

Rating: 9/10 (15 July 2008)

Hellboy (Ron Perlman), a demon from hell who manages to have an loving soul instead of being completely evil. Hellboy is a agent of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD) and he's living in New York City. Hellboy tries very hard to make his relationship works with his now wife Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), who has Pyrokinetic Powers. Which Liz doesn't want to tell Hellboy that she's pregnant. Hellboy still lives sloppy at his place and lives care-free in his life. Now Hellboy's next mission along with Liz, Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) an aquatic empath and the new agent in the team Johann Krauss (Voiced by "Family's Guy" Seth MacFarlane) is stop Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) from destroying the planet Earth. Since this dark hearted Prince from the Elves thinks that all humans are simply no good and he wants to awakening The Golden Army. These golden unstoppable clockwork soldiers are so superior to humans and they can't be destroyed. But Prince Nuada needs the golden Crown, which it's broken into three pieces to connect them to awakening his dark dream come true. The last piece from the Crown is kept safe from his sister Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), which she will do anything to keep it away from her evil brother. Now Hellboy and the team find themselves protecting her from her brother, while Abe falls in love for the first time in his life with this oddly beautiful princess.
Directed by Guillermo del Toro (Blade 2, Mimic, Pan's Labyrinth) made an extremely entertaining action/adventure/fantasy that has offers plenty of awesome production designs, great action sequences, terrific CGI effects and it is often very funny as well. Perlman, who's just great as Hellboy. Like he was in the original and he is perfectly cast as the role. Jones is also great as Abe, which he also plays two different roles in the movie. Jeffery Tambor is back as Agent Tom Manning and John Hurt makes an welcome brief appearance as Hellboy's father figure/Professor Trevor "Broom" Bruttenholm in the opening sequence. MacFarlane's talented voice worked nearly steals the show from the cast as the by the book agent, who's often hilarious in the role. There's hardly an dull moment in this much better than expected sequel and del Toro's film-making style has an good eye for strong visual moments with enough imagination to make different types of pictures here. Don't miss it. Screenplay by the director, who also came up with the premise with Mike Mignola (Who created the Comic Book "Hellboy". (**** 1/2 out of *****).