Hellboy II
The Golden Army

This movie is everything Hancock wanted to be, but failed to deliver.

Ron Perlman stars as Hellboy – the devilish spawn summoned to this dimension by the Nazis during World War II, but raised by a decent hearted professor, Broom Bruttenholm (John Hurt), to become part of an FBI task force to fight otherworldly demons and bad dudes (see Hellboy for more). After defeating a triumvirate of evil in Hellboy, the big red dude and his team have an even more dangerous opponent. The heir to the throne of an ancient lost civilization, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), wants to rise up and lead demons in a takeover of planet Earth, but he needs to summon The Golden Army, an indestructible force that has never been defeated, to do so, and Hellboy must, umm, destruct them.

Can Hellboy and the team stop Prince Nuada?

Will the team be able to stay united?

Will they be tempted to side with the demons, since they are more demon than human?

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro has proven he is THE director to turn to when you want to create monsters we have only seen in our nightmares (and they look super cool), but he also knows how to create enough story and action to make sure the visuals, no matter how stunning they may be, are not pointless or a singular driving force in grabbing our attention.

In many ways, he, along with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, have wonderfully crafted Hellboy into a character who mocks comic book conventions by making the clichés intentionally funny and campy in the right places. It’s another example of a movie that is funny without being stupid.

Unlike the first Hellboy movie, the themes of our hero as an outsider who doesn’t know his place in our world are downplayed, but not forgotten. Plus, some of the personal drama between Hellboy and his co-super hero/girlfriend, Liz (Selma Blair), are not essential to the story, so these scenes are not as compelling, and bit too mushy for my taste. Fortunately, we get to laugh at Prince Nuada’s twin sister, Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), who looks like the ghost of Ally McBeal with her white makeup and super thin frame.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and some language.