Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a perfect example of how good direction combined with the limitless imagination of one of the top creative talents in the industry, Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone), can make for a good summer film. In this installment, Hellboy (Ron Pearlman) and his Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense pals Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), Abe Sapian (Doug Jones) and Johann Krauss (voiced by Family Guy’s Seth McFarlane) must face a mythical world of creatures who rebel against the human race in order to take over and rule Earth. The leader of the rebellion, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), threatens to use the Golden Army, an indestructible army of golden robots, to achieve his goal. Sounds out there, doesn’t it? Well, what do you expect from a comic book movie? The irony is that this movie was not based on any comic story at all, just comic characters. Del Toro along with Hellboy creator, Mike Mignola, penned this original story just for the film. The movie’s success is not driven by the story though, but by the characters and the visual magic that can only come from del Toro. In fact, I would say the best scenes had no action at all, but were when the humanity of these odd characters was revealed. Pearlman was meant to play Hellboy as he’s the only that could pull off the wacky one liners that come from such a comic book character. Overall, I would say this flic was good summer fun and definitely worth escaping the heat for. It just gets me anxious for del Toro’s next, which I’ve read may be Tolkien’s The Hobbit.