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REVIEW: 'Hellboy 2' weaves a rich tapestry of marvels

By Tad Paulson

Let’s get the initial salvo of critical hyperbole out of the way now, just to set expectations for what lies ahead in this review: Guillermo del Toro, the Spanish writer-director of the righteously entertaining “Hellboy 2: The Golden Army,” is one of the best filmmakers alive and breathing today. For real. Any time one of his films is released, you should just go and ask questions later.

Other great modern directors of the fantasy genre leap to mind in comparison—Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, Peter Jackson and Alfonso Cuarón among them—but it’s difficult to conceive of these directors looking at del Toro’s work and not trying to figure where they went astray. He’s that good. From the malevolent terror of “The Devil’s Backbone” to the dark, majestic “Pan’s Labryinth,” here is a master storyteller whose natural instinct for deeply resonant character, dialogue and plot is matched only by a vast-ranging ability to realize his fantastical imagination visually on film. It’s no small wonder that Jackson has tapped del Toro to helm a two-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbitt.”

Proving once again that graphic novels have replaced the literary novel as the story-trough of choice for box office mojo (see “300,” “Sin City,” “Wanted,” and the forthcoming “The Sprit” and “Watchmen,” to name just a few), “Hellboy 2” is del Toro’s second big-screen echo of Mike Mignola’s wildly inventive series, following 2004’s “Hellboy.” Sony dumped the rights to the series after the original did middling business in theaters; Universal, seeing the film’s success on DVD and del Toro’s skyrocketing star, wisely ponied up for a sequel.

With his crimson skin, sawed-off horn stumps and giant stone fist (not to mention the Wolverine-ish haircut and cigar), Hellboy is that most unusual of cinematic heroes: a lovable hell-spawned demon with a Cadillac-sized heart. Played here winningly with crusty, deadpan wit by the returning Ron Perlman, Hellboy may be the most endearing, human superbeing you’ll cheer for this summer—a fresh gasp of air between the broody melancholy of “Hancock” and next week’s “The Dark Knight.”

The director thankfully eschews extensive backstory at the outset of “Hellboy 2,” so here are the broad strokes, if you need them: Rescued from the Nazis during WWII, Hellboy is a demon with a murky destiny who chugs beer, loves kittens, shaves off his horns and fights rampaging mythical creatures as an agent of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (the equivalent of the Middle Earth division of “Men in Black” crossed with the “A-Team” and a dab of “Ghostbusters”). His cohorts in the good fight include pyrokinetic girlfriend Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), the aquatic, blue-gilled Abe Sapien (the lanky-limbed Doug Jones, who played the Faun and the freakish “Pale Man” with the eyeballed hands in “Pan’s Labryinth”), and new BPRD supervisor Johann Krauss (voiced by Seth MacFarlane of “Family Guy”), a Teutonic tinman comprised of psychic, ectoplasmic fog.

Based on an original story conceived by del Toro and Mignola, “Hellboy 2” embraces similar thematics to del Toro’s buddy Neil Gaiman’s novel “American Gods,” depicting a modern world that has lost its reverence and awe for the old gods and legends, which exist as a hidden underworld moving parallel to our own. An elf prince named Nuada (played with menacing, acrobatic verve by Luke Goss, the head-splitting vamp baddie from del Toro’s “Blade II”) has a beef with the ancient truce between the human and magical realms; he conspires against his father, King Balor (Roy Dotrice), and his polar opposite, twin sister Nuala (Anna Walton), to unleash the titular “Golden Army” (comprised of “seventy times seventy” indestructible mechanical warriors) on mankind and rescue his brethren from the dustbin of folklore. Got all that?

As the BPRD battles Nuada to prevent the destruction he hopes to unleash on the human realm, Hellboy copes with the bifurcating (sorry, had to go there) demands of his relationship with Liz (the one somewhat conventional aspect of the whole film) and his wavering loyalty to the human race he so vigorously defends from his own kind.

“Hellboy 2” overflows with wondrous, awe-inspiring sequences at every turn, accompanied by Danny Elfman’s rumbling, soaring score. Some personal favorites: a thrilling street battle between a baby-clutching Hellboy and a Forest God that ends with a surprisingly emotional epiphany; a foray into a “Troll’s Market” that evokes the best and weirdest creatures of “Harry Potter”’s Diagon Alley and the Mos Eisely cantina of “Star Wars” (including a “baby” attached to an informant who declares he is actually a tumor—if only Kuato of “Total Recall” had been so honest); the swarm of “Tooth Fairies” that beset a crowd of humans and a stone entrance to an underground lair that just might be alive.

In the mind-melting 1972 concert film/documentary “Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii,” a young (and, by appearances, mildly bonged-out) guitarist David Gilmour, reflecting on the electronica of uber-classic LP “Dark Side of the Moon,” observed that the machinery behind the soundscapes was all “an extension of what’s coming out of our heads—it couldn’t run itself.” Indeed. Guillermo del Toro’s visual palette exists on a similar plateau, and “Hellboy 2” is a rich, constant tapestry of marvels, all of it an extension of a remarkable creative mind at the top of its game.

In short, any time a major film studio gives this man money and the green light, you can, with good faith and assurance, anticipate a picture that will, at least once, show you something you’ve never seen before. And that’s a rare thing indeed.

“Hellboy 2: The Golden Army” is playing at Sycamore Mall in Iowa City, Coral Ridge Mall in Coralville, and both the Wynnsong 12 and Galaxy 16 theaters in Cedar Rapids.