Hellboy film review

certificate_12A

HELLBOY

Hellboy is the latest, and one of the lesser known, comic book characters to make the leap from inky page to silver screen. Six foot five, red, with a tail, horns and a stone hand, Hellboy cuts an imposing figure. In addition to his physical attributes he has a droll wit, a passion for cats and a strong romantic streak. All of which make him an original character in an enjoyable film that has as much humour as it does action.

Based on the comics of Mike Mignola, Hellboy is brought to life with style and imagination by Mexican writer/director Guillermo del Toro and portrayed with force and warmth by Ron Perlman. Though the story deals with a Nazi plot to rule the world, the film's whimsical approach means the threat never takes on a sinister overtone, a fact some might feel diminishes its impact.

This balancing of light and dark is established from the beginning. The film opens in 1944 as the Nazis resort to desperate measures to aid their faltering cause. Under the guidance of Hitler's chief assassin Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden), a portal to the dark side has been opened. The allied troops thwart the operation, but not before a devilish little red creature passes through. As the baby Hellboy arrives, Rasputin is sucked out, leaving the toddler in the charge of US President Roosevelt's personal psychic, Professor Buttenholm (John Hurt) who tames him with a Baby Ruth candy bar.

Jumping forward sixty years, the Professor now runs the Bureau For Paranormal Research, a government operation whose role he explains with an impish sense of the dramatic. "There are things that go bump in the night and we're the ones that bump back." In the Bureau's arsenal of weapons ready to "bump back" is a now grown up Hellboy, along with his aquatic colleague Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), a slimy rotten-egg eating creature. When two ageless Nazis release a tentacled monster capable of reproducing itself, Hellboy is dispatched to save the world, a mission that sets up a showdown with Rasputin.

Though happy to battle evil, the stogie-smoking Hellboy would rather be hanging out with his cats and dreaming of the pretty paranormal pyrokineticist, Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), whose propensity to burst into flames whenever she gets excited made her one of the Bureau's assets. Their combustible relationship is inflamed even more with the arrival of John Meyers (Rupert Evans) an FBI agent being groomed to takeover the Bureau from the aging professor.