‘HELLBOY’ STUCK IN PURGATORY
DAVID HARBOUR STARS IN “HELLBOY.”
The new “Hellboy” is a movie for people who thought Guillermo del Toro’s earlier series featuring the superhero was fine but wish it had more massive head wounds, eyes getting plucked out of people’s faces and dead children made into a stew.
This is what Hollywood would look like if the new Directors Guild of America contract called for filmmakers to be paid by the decapitation.
The Hellboy character returns to the big screen with a new production team and new actors, just 11 years after del Toro’s last big-screen run in “Hellboy II: The Golden Army.”
“Hellboy” has story problems, with too much exposition and not enough character development. “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour, seemingly a perfect choice for his ability to project melancholy and a luggish humor, isn’t given enough time to do either of those things.
But director Neil Marshall makes a bold move in a more disturbing direction, including the horror elements from Mike Mignola’s comic-book series, while ramping up gratuitous gore and carnage to almost fetishistic levels. It’s a decision that may alienate a few moviegoers who didn’t notice or believe the R rating. (Both earlier “Hellboy” movies were PG-13.) But the action is well-staged, and the Fangoria magazine elements develop a stylistic consistency.
“Hellboy” begins with a crow slowly plucking the eye from a dead knight’s body, before a scene with King Arthur and Merlin. Yes, they’re in this, too. The fasttalking narration begins to feel like a constant companion, as Andrew Cosby’s script (drawing inspiration from at least four of Mignola’s comic-book storylines) rushes through a trilogy’s worth of back stories, double crosses and big battles.
Hellboy quickly develops a rift with his monster-fighting father (Ian McShane), finds some new allies and battles a receiving line of enemies, including a reborn medieval sorceress played
by “Resident Evil” protagonist Milla Jovovich.
The character design is memorable throughout “Hellboy,” quickly separating the series from del Toro’s distinct visual canvas. Makeup designer Joel Harlow, exceptional in the newer “Star Trek” movies, favors grotesque facial disfigurements, eye sockets that have been sewn up and amputated appendages replaced with pointy prosthetic limbs — better to impale powerless humans, who are basically expendable in this movie.
But Marshall, who has displayed excellence directing “Dog Soldiers” and “The Descent” and two all-time great “Game of Thrones” TV episodes, can manage a good action scene, working well with the film’s visual effects artists. Like the Marshall-directed “Thrones” episode “The Watchers on the Wall,” the English filmmaker maintains a strong sense of geography through extreme levels of chaos.
The opening sequence at a lucha libre match in Tijuana is fun and builds well, introducing the character better than another long origin story could have. (We get a much shorter recap of Hellboy’s early history later.) A scene with Hellboy fighting three giants is legitimately thrilling, blending the exhausted humor of the character with well-choreographed and gruesome action.
Less effective are the scenes with superpowered sidekicks Alice Monaghan and Ben Daimio, who suffer from the time crunch and remain two-dimensional characters. A forced cameo with Lobster Johnson (Thomas Haden Church) is one of several nods to comic-book readers that will only confuse newcomers to the “Hellboy” universe.
Harbour is an outstanding choice for the complicated hero. But by the last third of the film, when we want more of Harbour, his performance becomes less central to the action. While he emotes well through the heavy prosthetic makeup, he barely gets a chance with all the location changes and quick edits.
At two hours, “Hellboy” feels closer to three. And yet there still seems to be something missing.