Hellboy
Cast
Ron Perlman .... Hellboy
John Hurt .... Professor Trevor 'Broom' Bruttenholm
Selma Blair .... Liz Sherman
Rupert Evans .... John Myers
Karel Roden .... Grigori Rasputin
Directed by
Guillermo del Toro
Rater #2 has description and review.
Rater #1
Has Not Seen Movie
Rater #2
6/10. Expectations have been set way too high now. Every time a movie based
on a comic book comes out, everyone expects it to be the next , when
a) most, if not all, of the popular comic book franchises have
already been made into movies, and b) most comic book movies can't
compare to Spider-Man. Yet these movies keep getting pumped out
methodically, and people buy into them. I am one of those people, so
on its opening weekend, I saw Hellboy, a lesser known comic-movie.
There's obviously a reason why it's like that. Hellboy may be an
interesting character, but his surroundings aren't.
Ron Perlman plays the title character, a demon transported from hell
during the Nazi regime. He's brought up by Prof. Broom (John Hurt,
I'll get to him later), and soon helps out the American government in
controlling paranormal creatures. However, it turns out he has human
feelings and all, and must face his inner demons, so to speak.
I must admit, going into Hellboy, I had high expectations. The
trailers looked cool, and I thought it could surpass Spider-Man and
get into Hulk territory. But I was wrong. Everything that went right
in the two previously mentioned movies didn't happen in this one. The
exciting originality and spontaniety of Spider-Man was thrown away in
lieu of cheesy special effects. And the stunning story and depth in
The Hulk was nowhere to be seen here. But I shouldn't be judging this
movie based on others.
In short, Hellboy is generic. Although the plot was far-out, it
didn't go that far with it, and ended up just being a generic "kick
the bad guy's ass" scenario. Any of the fight scenes seemed
completely fake, until you realized that Hellboy was just a guy in
makeup. Then I was in awe, but the sheer awkwardness of the computer
animation just seemed off. Hellboy's makeup, though, was great; it
seemed perfectly flawless (although I did see an image afterwards
where some of his fingers were visible when there were supposed to be
incased in a wooden arm), and was probably the highest point of the
movie. The movie in itself was entertaining, but just not as gripping
as it could be.
Perlman is a great Hellboy. He stands out among this cast that could
have gone for A-list stars but didn't. Hurt seemed to underplay his
role. Ironically, Hurt played the title character in The Elephant
Man, and I found these two movies similar, as they both deal with
ostricizacation due basically to looks. Selma Blair, as the love
interest, does what she can with her one note character, but she
can't really do much with it.
All in all, Hellboy is entertaining, generally. There's nothing new.
Just some PG-13 blow 'em up, and that's it. Destined to not be a
classic.
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence and frightening images.
Running time: 132 minutes
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