Review: Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                   HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY
                 (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

      CAPSULE: Guillermo del Toro makes great horror films
      like CRONOS and PAN'S LABYRINTH.  His graphic novel
      films are just not his best work.  HELLBOY II's visual
      images are spectacular and the film is full of fights
      and action, but there is only a bit of plot and that
      involves an epic fantasy premise that would have taken
      multiple films to do well.  The characters are flat
      and the film has no center.  This is a film to watch,
      but there is not much to think about.  The conclusion
      holds no surprises.  Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

  HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY has my vote for this year's "WHAT
  DREAMS MAY COME" Award for the most spectacular visuals in
  service to the least worthy story.  The two films are somewhat
  different in that WHAT DREAMS MAY COME was saccharine while
  HELLBOY II has a graphic novel hero involved in a half-hearted
  attempt at Tolkein-like fantasy.  And it pains me to say this,
  because HELLBOY II is written and directed by Guillermo del Toro
  whom I consider the best living horror film director.  He makes
  horror films and films based on graphic novels.  To my taste he
  is much better at the former than at the latter.  Every film he
  makes is visually exquisite, but the graphic novel films just do
  not have the same quality of storytelling that he gets when he
  creates his own characters.  He has a better touch telling
  stories about vulnerable characters than with invincible ones.
  Del Toro is probably missing the boat on the character of Hellboy
  also.  The part-human and part-demon Hellboy should be torn
  between human and demonic urges.  That would be a fairly dramatic
  premise.  Instead he comes off as the brawny, master sergeant
  type, not very complex or very interesting.  He is more earthy
  than most superheroes, but his character could be more engaging
  than it is.

  Hellboy (played by Ron Perlman) is involved here in a
  Tolkein-like high fantasy.  The film suggests there is a war
  between humans and the mythical creatures like fairies and elves.
  The adventure is a quest for the pieces of an ancient crown which
  gives the bearer the power to command a clockwork "golden" army.
  For most of the film it does not matter what they are looking
  for, the point is that Hellboy gets into fights to find the
  thing.  The crown is actually the key to the war between humans
  and the creatures of myth.  This is a big concept and one film
  devoted to the subject might not give del Toro sufficient time to
  develop the myth of the great crown or the mighty army.  But it
  is not much of even this film.  Most of the screen time is spent
  with Hellboy trying to clobber some great monster or with him
  sitting around drinking beer after beer and while bonding with
  his effete fish-man sidekick Abe Sapien.  Sapien looks like a
  fugitive from Rene Laloux's FANTASTIC PLANET.  The beer sessions
  give plenty of opportunity for a product placement of a
  particular Mexican beer.  Hellboy's chief enemy is Prince Nuada
  (Luke Goss), an evil sorcerer who is tied by an invisible bond to
  his non-evil sister Princess Nuala (Anna Walton).  Any injury to
  one will afflict both.  So nobody wants to hurt Nuada for fear of
  hurting Nuala.  The look for Nuada seems borrowed from Michael
  Moorcock's Elric.

  Part of the pleasure of a del Toro film is in looking for
  allusions and personal touches.  Del Toro seems to have two
  trademarks that hail back to his first feature film CRONOS.  He
  seems to always have visual imagery of clockwork and some of
  insects.  In this film he goes overboard on the clockwork.  There
  is clockwork under the opening titles.  The final fight is on a
  giant clockwork set.  There are no insects but there are small
  crawly things called "tooth fairies" that stand in for the
  insects.  There is a doff of the hat to Stanley Kubrick and John
  Landis with an allusion to the mythical and non-existent film SEE
  YOU NEXT WEDNESDAY.

  More touches, good and bad: One might expect that after STAR TREK
  V a director would think twice about having drunken men bond by
  singing together, but del Toro tries it here and it still does
  not add much charm.  There are also several shots on TV monitors
  of the Universal horror films that del Toro likes.  There are
  supposedly scenes set at the famous Giant's Causeway.  If so the
  "causeway" remains off-screen.  The film does have a giant, but
  we are not told if it is supposed to be the legendary Fionn mac
  Cumhaill (a.k.a. Finn McCool) who supposedly built the causeway.
  The credit sequence at the end seems to have subliminal messages
  different from the credits.  Perhaps people will want to rent the
  film to see the credits run by a little more slowly.

  The visuals of HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY are a triumph of
  imagination, but the story is more of a failure.  I would rate it
  a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.

  Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0411477/>


  					Mark R. Leeper
  					mleeper at optonline.net
  					Copyright 2008 Mark R. Leeper