Hellboy
 If Hellboy
weren’t so good-natured and energetic, you’d have to classify it as a guilty
pleasure. However, it’s so well-made, so honest in its comic-bookness, and so true to
its B-movie (and pulp print) roots, that it simply qualifies as a pleasure.
You may have missed it in the theaters. It did modest
box-office business and it never seemed to register on the must-see lists of most
cineastes. I think it’s a bigger hoot than the critically overhyped Spider-Man 2,
if only because it takes itself so much less seriously (although I have to admit that I
love the concept of an "action movie" that’s primarily about a crippling
inability to act decisively).
Hellboy’s strengths are the strengths of comic
books themselves. It’s filled with color and motion, bursting with action, and it
wears its emotions on its sleeve. Of course, it also suffers from the shortcomings
inherent to the superhero comic: it’s not always logical, and action frequently
trumps character development.
One could argue that Hellboy is very nearly a
nonstop sequence of special effects, but the movie doesn’t feel as though it’s about
special effects. Filled as it is with fantastic villains and unlikely heroes, it’s
about the power of love: filial love, loyalty, and, yes, romantic love.
If that sounds like a stretch for a storyline featuring a
seven-foot-tall red demon with a stone left hand -- well, you’re right. Or it would
be, were said demon not personified by Ron Perlman. Covered in red makeup, festooned with
sawn-off horns and a spiked tail, Perlman makes Hellboy completely believable -- and
completely human. If you think Peter Parker has a tough life, you should walk a mile in
Hellboy’s size 20s.
I don’t mean to disparage Hellboy’s plot
when I say that it almost seems constructed by a random generator of comic-book plots: it
has Nazis, the occult, a bloodthirsty sex-kitten villainess, and not one but several
really nasty villains, including Grigori Rasputin.
But I get ahead of myself. The plot, such as it is,
concerns an attempt by the Nazis to harness the energies of the occult in order to ensure
world domination. On a remote island, a secret cabal of occultists and technicians labor
to break down the separation between the planes of existence, only to have their plans
sabotaged by an Allied commando strike. However, in the fraction of a second that the
cosmic portals are down, a tiny red demon scampers through and is tamed by the offer of a
candy bar. Jump ahead to the present -- or something like it. That little scamp has grown
into Hellboy, agent of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, the US
government’s first line of defense against "things that go bump in the
night" (motto: "We bump back").
And that’s just the setup. The Nazis haven’t
given up -- and Rasputin returns from the grave (or another dimension, or wherever
comic-book villains live between their many deaths). Dimensional portals are in danger of
tumbling down, and Earth, as we know it, will cease to exist -- unless the plot can be
foiled by Hellboy, Abe Sapien (a fish-man played by Doug Jones and voiced by David Hyde
Pierce), Liz Sherman (a telekinetic fire-starter played by Selma Blair), and the
BPRD’s FBI liaison, John Meyers (Rupert Evans).
Okay, it’s silly -- but unlike so many other movies
derived from the comics, it’s not pompous or "profound." In fact, it
perfectly balances on the razor’s edge between treating its plot conventions with
respect and lodging its tongue firmly in its cheek.
In keeping with the recent trend of ever-expanding bonus
material, Hellboy is a two-DVD set (and there are rumors of a three-CD Director’s
Cut edition in the works). Normally, I’d anticipate that piling on the multidisc
treatment would sink the movie’s simple pleasures beneath too much baggage, but
director Guillermo del Toro is careful to keep things delightfully light.
To begin with, there are two audio commentary tracks -- one
with del Toro and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, the other with cast members Ron
Perlman, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor, and Rupert Evans. Del Toro and Mignola focus more on
technical matters and production details, while the cast trades anecdotes about the shoot.
Disc 1 also features a variety of "branching options" that take off from the
film to show you storyboards, comic artwork, and behind-the-scenes set visits. Disc 2
includes a two-and-a-half-hour documentary, The Seeds of Creation, which is
definitely not a typical making-of infomercial. In addition, there are animated sequences,
still photos and production galleries, storyboard comparisons, deleted scenes, cast bios,
character profiles, and TV and theatrical trailers.
What could be left for that Director’s Cut?
Supposedly about 15 minutes of film that fills in some plot holes, and other unspecified
goodies.
Maybe a better video transfer will be included -- if I have
one cavil about Hellboy, it’s that the transfer, while admirably crisp, seems
a tad washed-out in places and doesn’t have the sharpest detail in its many dark
scenes. Perhaps that’s because it was filmed digitally, and the original images
didn’t have phenomenal detail to begin with (something I wondered about with the
theatrical print I saw in New York City).
On the other hand, the DVD’s Dolby Digital 5.1-channel
soundtrack is darn close to reference quality -- it ranks among the best DD efforts
I’ve heard this year. There’s lots of great surround information going on -- and
the bass effects are breathtaking.
Hellboy isn’t perfect -- it does have a
few continuity gaps that the Director’s Cut may well rectify, and it seems to
run about a quarter of an hour too long -- but it’s stylish, witty, and fun to watch.
Add the better-than-adequate transfer and the full menu of fascinating extras, and you
have a DVD edition worth taking home. It’s hard to imagine the Director’s Cut
substantially bettering this edition, so my advice is to raise a little Hellboy
now.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
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