Hellboy

It’s probably inevitable that any comic-book hero is going to get a reboot if they’ve been away from the cinema for too long in the modern era, and it’s 11 years since Guillermo Del Toro last released a Hellboy movie, so it’s probably time. Del Toro’s movies have a lot of fandom in the geek community, though both have their flaws – the first suffers from an introductory-point-of-view character who is resolutely uninteresting and really kinda unnecessary, the second from a strange backgrounding of its lead character (it plays more like a regular “monster of the week” episode of a possible Hellboy TV series than something that really demands to be a movie) – they are beautiful and have great character moments and some standout performances, but they’re not perfect films. This is… ahem, not that either, but its flaws probably lie more in the “let’s throw in everything but the kitchen sink, never mind coherence, taste or money spent on special effects”. The effects do have a few moments resembling The Scorpion King bits of “Mummy Returns”, and this is very definitely an R Rated Hellboy movie with splattering blood, frequent swearing and a whole lot of ultraviolence. But it does have a pulpy energy to it – David Harbour’s Hellboy plays right into the character’s centre as grumpy-teenage-monster-hero, and there’s some strong moments from the supporting cast – Ian McShane isn’t exactly breaking his personal mould, and nor is Mila Jovavich, but they do their usual shtick damn well. I can’t exactly endorse this as great artistic film making, and some of the leaps from plot point to plot point have got to be described as tenuous, but as big grotesque gory fun this definitely fits the bill.