Hellboy (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Buy This Item Hellboy (Two-Disc Special Edition) by Sony Pictures  Available from Amazon  $14.99  on 11-24-2008     In the ongoing deluge of comic-book adaptations, <I>Hellboy</I> ranks well above average. Having turned down an offer to helm <I>Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban</I> in favor of bringing <I>Hellboy</I>'s origin story to the big screen, the gifted Mexican director Guillermo del Toro compensates for the excesses of <I>Blade II</I> with a moodily effective, consistently entertaining action-packed fantasy, beginning in 1944 when the mad monk Rasputin--in cahoots with occult-buff Hitler and his Nazi thugs--opens a transdimensional portal through which a baby demon emerges, capable of destroying the world with his powers. Instead, the aptly named Hellboy is raised by the benevolent Prof. Bloom, founder of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, whose allied forces enlist the adult Hellboy (Ron Perlman, perfectly cast) to battle evil at every turn. While nursing a melancholy love for the comely firestarter Liz (Selma Blair), Hellboy files his demonic horns ("to fit in," says Bloom) and wreaks havoc on the bad guys. The action is occasionally routine (the movie suffers when compared to the similar <I>X-Men</I> blockbusters), but del Toro and Perlman have honored Mike Mignola's original Dark Horse comics with a lavish and loyal interpretation, retaining the amusing and sympathetic quirks of character that made the comic-book Hellboy a pop-culture original. He's red as a lobster, puffs stogies like Groucho Marx, and fights the good fight with a kind but troubled heart. What's not to like? <I>--Jeff Shannon</I> Reader Reviews Comic fans have had a field day of late. They have had the opportunity to see a number of movies based on comics brought to life and done right for once. Past mistakes included a Captain America that tore out the heart of the star spangled hero while the original Punisher lost everything that made the character and replaced him with a stoic performance by Dolph Lundgren. All that has changed and this film keeps the ball rolling. In the late 40's, a special forces team is on the trail of a hidden group of Nazis. The Nazis leader is Rasputin, the same mysterious monk from Russia, who is about to open a portal between this dimension and another. That dimension contains what we would call demons and what Hitler is calling a surprise ally. Only the team, led by young Professor Trevor 'Broom' Bruttenholm, stand in Rasputin's way, sending him to the other side. But in his place comes another creature, a small, red skinned, horned baby that they promptly call Hellboy. Hellboy grows up to be a man during the credits and we are taken to a new secret organization, falling under the department of the FBI: the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Agent John Myers (Rupert Evans) has just been assigned to the organization to handle Hellboy (Ron Perlman). He was chosen specifically by Prof. Bruttenholm (John Hurt) but as to why we don't discover until further into the film. Myers is introduced to Hellboy's fellow team member Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), an amphibious creature with telepathy to the extreme. He is then brought face to face with Hellboy himself. While he at first appears brutish, ill mannered and full of himself, as the movie progresses Myers gets to see the real, emotional side of the big red giant. And that makes up a better portion of the underlying story within the story, a creatures search for humanity. Rasputin is back and still trying to open the portal he was forced through so many years ago. Aided by a surgery loving/enhanced ex-Nazi and his former lover, he has gathered the powers that be in an attempt to bring this about. One lure was Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), a fellow BPRD agent who left in search of a normal life. Once together, he baits them into a trap beneath the streets of New York. And with the power of Hellboy, he intends to open those dimensional gates and let loose the demons held at bay for so many years. The movie is indeed a comic book brought to life. Director Guillermo del Toro has brought the imagery of the page to the screen. He knows comics, he loves comics and he has treated his source material with the respect it deserves. There are scenes throughout that would make perfect still shots that would fit in any comic. The actors here all turn in performances that also do the material justice. None play their roles as over the top comic book characters. Again, this has been a problem in most films to be released in the past. Here, they are given respect as to the camp seen before. Ron Perlman does a fantastic job as Hellboy, making the character not only the tremendously strong, ferociously powerful creature one to fear if you are on the wrong side of the law, but he brings out the emotions beneath that red skin. The effects, though mainly CGI, are well done and believable. Which is a credit to those in charge seeing as how it would have been almost impossible to present them any other way. The movie has a few flaws but I only saw one that affected my viewing: the non-stop promotion machine that has pushed it into the public eye for so many months. I felt as if there was so little left for me to discover here, so little that I hadn't seen or had a glimpse of in the past few months. For once, this was a movie that lived up to the hype but at the same time had enough hype to almost blow the picture away. For a fun time that most of the family can enjoy, except for those to easily impressed upon with violence, check this one out.

Hellboy (Two-Disc Special Edition) Available from Amazon Price: $14.99 Updated on 11-24-2008.

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