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 Hellboy? Hell yea!
by Taddimusprime
 So after reading a few issues of the comic book way back in the day, and then finding the preview for the film to be quite interesting I decided to jaunt down to my local overpriced movietheater *coughing*10.50 ripoff*coughing* to check out Hellboy. For those of you that don't know, Hellboy, as the name suggests, is a boy from hell. The film opens with the Nazis, *quoting Harrison Ford* I hate those guys!, conducting a black magic ritual to open a portal to hell. We all know that Hitler was into the occult, and to him it seemed a good idea to open this portal and bring in these old evil gods to ransack the earth. In order to do this he enlists the help of Rasputin, yes THE Rasputin, to do his dirty work. Those damn commies and facists working together... DIABOLICAL!
Unknown to the Nazis, the Americans are already there and ready to stop them! Professor Bruttenholm, played brilliantly by Alien popping out of the chest fame John Hurt, realizes Hitler's scheme and is ready to foil it. The Americans stop the Nazi plot, but the portal was open long enough for a small boy, a hellboy as it were, to creep out of the portal. Using the allure of a Baby Ruth bar, the Professor coaxes the hellboy to calm down and he adopts him. Without corporate america how would we have befriended this hellish boy?? *goes out and buys up some Baby Ruth bars*
Fast forward to modern times, and now Hellboy all grown up, 6'5" with a large stone hand and filed down horns (to fit in), is working for the FBI fighting paranormal oddities. Scully? However, 2004 seems to be the year of the apocalypse (and here I thought Judgement day was August 29th, 1997) and it's up to hellboy and crew to figure out what is going on and thwart their diabolical plan!
Enlisted in his crew of super goody two shoes, is Abe the talking fish thing. He's sort of a psychic Aquaman, but doesn't get kidnapped as much. Also along for the ride is a prettyboy whitey FBI agent, who is so generic cookie cutter of a character, I won't even bother describing him anymore. Suffice it to say, he's an FBI agent.
Ron Perlman really makes this movie work. His portrayal of this larger than life deamon, who has a soft spot for cats, cigars, and his exgirlfriend is fantastic. He pulls the deadpan deliveries that would make Stan Lee and Jack Kirby proud. I was reminded very much of the Thing from the Fantastic Four with this character.
My big beef with the film, as you may have already noticed, is that most of the characters, aside from Hellboy and the Professor, are very 1 dimentional. However Pearlman's performance makes this a movie worth seeing. The action scenes are great, as is the direction, by obvious Hellboy fanboy Guillermo del Toro, who has previously directed Mimic and Blade II.
So to use a cliche, Hellboy was a HELL UVA good time! Boy was it hellishous! Ok I'll stop. It's worth the ticket price if you want a fun action flick.
-Tadd
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