The Sons of Hellboy: A Clockwork Army

Rating: 10/10 (11 July 2008)

With that title, The Sons of Hellboy, maybe I'm giving some spoilers but also a possible title for the next picture of Hellboy, you know if some old man wanted to call Jackass 2 "The Son of Jackass", why not that title for our red hero. Anyway, The Golden Army is a good title but by far a better army but of course not good for us, the humans. "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" begins with an old story about a battle in which The Golden Army was the protagonist that soon became a legend. A very young and very funny Hellboy is been amaze by this "legend" (in the unique scene/flashback with the great John Hurt as the Professor Trevor Bruttenholm) of course not even imagine that he will be the only hope for the humans when this ancient battle treat to be repeated. Meanwhile Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) is making all the necessary to can awake again The Golden Army we have similar situations of the first film with the secret team (soon will be no secret), I mean with Hellboy (Ron Perlman), Liz (Selma Blair) and Abraham Sapien (Doug Jones). Those similar situations will take them to the chaos occasioned by Prince Nuada and the action begins with small but very dangerous creatures. As I write, the secret team will be no longer secret, courtesy of our Hellboy, and a truly great character will be introduced, I'm talking of the new boss of Hellboy Johann Krauss (voice of Seth McFarlane, creator of Family Guy!) and soon all the fantasy will be here. We will see a new world and many many great creatures in it; when I saw that scene in the Troll Market it reminds me the very famous bar from Star Wars, of course the music was missing. Anyway, as the film goes Hellboy and pals will be the only hope to stop the Prince Nuada but of course it won't be easy thanks to Nuada's twin sister, Princess Nuala (Anna Walton) but don't get me wrong, she is with our heroes yet if Hellboy hits Nuada Hellboy hits Nuala (funny names) and if that sounds bad, you should know that Abraham Sapien loves Nuala! So the film also plays with love and also with the way that Hellboy is starting to see the humans. We always are so damn stupid so we can't realize that Hellboy is the good guy ("believe it or not, he's the good guy" is the tag-line) and we can't appreciate our only hope who he is helping us in a battle that has nothing related with him but damn who can blame us since our hero is a f*cking demon with bad humor and the Beast of the Apocalypse! Anyway the only thing that really matters is that Liz believes that he is the best man so we can't be worry, Hellboy will fight against that mentioned army of gold and the results are very good!
Is more than excellent that Blair, Jones, Hurt but specially that Ron Perlman are here again but Rupert Evans' character is not any more here and that worked very well because even that Myers was the key in the ending of the first film this time he would not have been really useful against The Golden Army so better a team with read, blue, Liz and Johann. Talking about this new character, I didn't know that Seth MacFarlane made his voice, which is kind of cool, but unfortunately there are few screenings with subtitles in my city but fortunately Guillermo del Toro supervised all the dubbing and I founded it really good (the voice of Abraham Sapien is quite similar) and also I founded surprising that the -annoying- Jesus Ochoa dubbed Hellboy and later even more surprising that he actually made a good job.
Then like the first Hellboy film, this is extremely enjoyable, fast paced and definitely I would like to watch it again. I liked it more than the first one; now we have truly amazing creatures, the clockwork army and a better "mission" for read and blue. My only possible complaint about the first one was that after the fantastic mythology of the character we have those evil persons back and stuff but during the film Sammael is the only real opponent of Hellboy and almost until the end is when the rest of the gang appears to fight with red. So actually I think this is a superior film since it has a legendary battle that involves humans but practically only as the victims and that works perfect in the times when Hellboy is becoming a very well known hero but also we are loosing him. But again he, and now also Abraham Sapien, has someone to fight for and also to drink for (hilarious part with some Tecates and some romantic music). Finally, I'm more than glad that Guillermo del Toro is having a great way from project to project and I'm glad he made this sequel and that he will make The Hobbit and the possible third Hellboy film. So can't wait to see more and believe me, I'm going to finally get some Hellboy comic books!!!