Hellboy released in 2004 was a supernatural adventure directed by Guillermo del Toro. Mike Mignola’s popular Dark Horse Comic series was the inspiration behind it. The film was able to create quite a bit of hype even before it was released and it was possible thanks to the concept of a “different” Superhero.
Lets take you through our Hellboy movie review.
The Plot
It is a story of a demon that was created by a secret Nazi agency and the process was halted by Professor Bruttenholm. Later this creature named Hellboy (Perlman) becomes the highest rated employee of the Paranormal Research and Defense Bureau of the US. Suddenly an evil demon called Rasputin rises with a mission to immolate the earth. He kills the professor and Hellboy becomes the last hope for the humanity to save the world.
Development, Characters and Directorial Work
The best part of this comic book adaptation is the director has managed to keep the essence of the story intact. Guillermo has done a good job of keeping the tones and colors of the comic series. The film looks quite different from the regular superhero films. Though Hellboy is not a popular superhero like Spiderman or Superman, but Guillermo and his antihero Hellboy catch the interest of the audience quickly.
The film starts its journey into the shades of the World War II, but soon it jumps to the present day where we get to meet the rugged, red skin giant Hellboy. We also get to know that the professor is the closest to him and this different looking superhero has a crush on his fellow agent Liz (Blair) who also has her own supernatural powers.
Apart from the main struggle of the good and bad we meet many other characters and different situations unfold. The director also introduces a normal guy who is Hellboy’s fellow agent and likes Liz. This develops a love triangle between them. We also get to see many different kinds of relationship and shades of the characters as the happenings occur.
Del Toro has tried to keep the Hellboy very much human in terms of his emotions. It could have easily been a super charismatic character who has great power, but thanks to the director and the actor Hellboy is much believable and normal. On the other hand, Jeffrey Tambor adds good humor and supporting turn through his character as the Boss of the agency. Blair does a good job with her limited space and Hurt shows his acting skills by adding emotional sparks in different scenes.
Drawbacks
The problem is the best thing about this film is also the drawback of this film. Del Toro’s approach to keep the happenings low profile stops the film from to hit the right emotional chords. The characters are quite believable, but sometimes they lack the emotional leap to make the scenes more dramatic.
Overall, it’s a very good attempt on this different genre of superhero and comic series. It has received a good amount of critical response and most of the common viewers have liked it. There is no doubt that it deserves a sequel.