Hellboy 2: The Golden Army isn’t just the most exciting, interesting and all around engaging movie of the summer, so far it’s also the best thing I’ve seen in the theater all year. To say that Hellboy 2 is the best movie of the summer is a severe understatement. A more accurate description would be to say that Hellboy 2 uses its right hand of doom to bitchslap the entire summer line up of 2008 into submission. It has the heart and intelligence that was completely missing from Wanted, it’s got better fights than The Incredible Hulk, it’s overflowing with the humor that’s missing from The Dark Knight and has better special effects than Iron Man and Hancock combined. Plus its not Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Metamucil or that shitfest known as Speed Racer that alone is a huge checkmark in the plus column. Simply put, if you don’t get off you lazy butt this weekend to go see Hellboy 2 in the theaters you must be an asshole who hates anything great. I hope you enjoy sitting through Meet Dave and your second viewing of You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is the follow up to the 2004 original featuring characters and storylines from the excellent award winning comic book by Mike Mignolia. It’s a bit surprising that Universal decided to make a sequel to the first Hellboy considering the film failed to cover its budget during its domestic theatrical run and finally earned back some of its money through a successful DVD release. But thank god somebody at the studio had the balls to green light this picture, because I can truly say that the cinematic world would be poorer without it. With films like Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone under his belt Writer/Director Guillermo del Toro had already proven that he is an amazingly talented filmmaker but Hellboy 2 is a showcase of a master deeply in tune with his craft.
For those that failed to see the original film, Hellboy is a demon that snuck his way to earth through a portal to hell opened by the Nazis turning the end of World War 2. When he first stepped into our dimension Hellboy was a small demon child around 8 or 10 years old, shortly after his arrival he was found by a group of allied troops including Professor Trevor Bruttenholm who would go on to raise the aptly dubbed Hellboy into adulthood. From there Hellboy goes on to be a major member of The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (the B.P.R.D.) fighting all kinds of nasty demons and supernatural beings alongside firestarter Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien the merman.
In Hellboy 2 the trio is joined by Johann Kraus a disembodied spirit who uses his psychic abilities and gaseous appearance to fight evil. Together the quartet team up to fight against Price Nuada a member of ancient and forgotten reality that is planning to use the Golden Army of giant unbeatable clockwork knights to wipe the stain of humanity from the face of the earth. As great as the battles between the B.P.R.D. and Kraus are, the highlight of the film is easily the scene in the Troll market. The collection of unusual creatures existing in the metaphysical flea market is simply staggering, almost demanding repeat viewing just to see all the amazing monsters proudly on display in every frame. The sheer multitude makes the beloved cantina and Jabba place scenes from the “Star Wars” trilogy look like an episode of “Sesame Street.” On top of that there are some amazing moments with a hungry flock of tooth fairies and a brilliant jaw dropping fight between Hellboy and a forest god that’s well over seven stories tall. In my entire life I have never seen a film that looks as good as Hellboy 2, with it del Toro has rasied the bar of fantasy filmmaking tenfold.
The first Hellboy movie was way too long and featured a startlingly limited amount of creatures for Hellboy to do battle with. While the film’s length was a slight problem the flick’s greatest offense was the creation of John Myers, a new useless human character that never appeared in the comic book. He is essentially the Jar-Jar Binks of the cinematic Hellboy universe. Del Toro used him to waste an enormous amount of the first film’s runtime on the boring love triangle between himself, Liz and Hellboy. With Hellboy 2 del Toro learned from his previous mistake and eliminates the Myers character in the first ten minutes and wastes little time on the love affair between Red and Ms. Sherman. Del Toro wisely decided to fill this flick with wall to wall action and less on the lovey-dovey bullshit. To be fair there are a few moments spent on the various romances between the multiple characters in the flick. But with the exception of an inebriated session of commiseration between Abe and H.B. it rarely stops the flow of the movie as it did in the first flick.
My only real beef with Hellboy 2 would have to be the overuse of Doug Jones who in addition to playing the role of Abe Sapien also appears as two other creatures in this movie. Jones was a former mime and does most of his acting with his hands and is easily identifiable in any role because he always comes across as one of those douche bags you want to punch in the face at Fisherman’s Wharf. He is seriously overrated and is usually more distracting in the scenes he appears in than actually enjoyable. I was secretly hoping to see Abe get torn in half so we wouldn’t be subjected to Mr. Jones’ “spirit fingers” and “jazz hands” in “Hellboy 3.” Besides that unavoidable annoyance Hellboy 2 only has one other minor speed bump, it’s the first scene of the film and it features an adolescent Hellboy speaking with a dubbed voice that could put most Godzilla movies to shame. But besides that I had a hard time finding any faults with this picture. It’s entertaining as hell (no pun intended), has impeccable special effects that combine the best features of prosthetic work and CGI and has genuinely funny moments that punctuate the enthralling action scenes. Plus it has a cripple goblin that has to use a makeshift wheelchair to get around! What more do you need? Now get up off your ass and go see it!
10 out of 10 talking baby tumors
Tyler Shainline
