Hellboy (2004)

the audience applauded

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Del Toro brings this somewhat obscure, but great comic book to life in a magnificent manner! It has a great sense of humor and an overall atmosphere to it. It's grim and dark, but not overbearingly so! Ron Perlman is great as Hellboy and the rest are good too. Awesome monster/creature designs and great action as well! Top notch!

I'm a fan of Ron Pearlman and I really thought I would like Hellboy and I did like the character, however there felt like something missing. I really wish I could put my finger on it, but it wasn't at all what I expected. However it was entertaining and deserves at least a 6. Maybe a 6.5 if that was an option.

It is a lot of fun, it has a sense of humor...it is flawed.Hellboy is one of those movies that seems to suffer from a lack of elaboration. There are elements in the films that are beyond interesting, things that we as an audience would like to see more of, things that we would like to know more about.Unfortunately the film never goes into it and that is possibly because there was never an intent to turn Hellboy into an out and out franchise. Because of that the mythology that the movie hints at is only given a lip service and it is done to move the plot along.It is a shame. It touches enough on it's own little mythology that it could have been an X-Files style franchise with a superhero.Instead of that you get an entertaining movie and really little more. The elements are there but they had to move along.What remains is a fun film with a good sense of humor, an action movie that took a bit of time to develop a few characters and make sure to give the others a real personality.It is not bad, but it is frustrating watching it, no matter how fun it is, because you know what could have been.

The Nazis are up to their old occult tricks again, using magick to try and open a portal and unleash ancient gods upon the Earth. When the allied forces intervene, all the Nazis manage to release from their inter-dimensional gateway is a red skinned, demon-child, who grows up to become Hellboy, an indestructible, cigar-chomping hero fighting the forces of evil for the FBI.Guillermo Del Toro directed this adaptation of the Dark Horse comic-book, meaning that it's perfect for those who enjoy an excess of the following in their movies: the dark, clockwork creations, leather, rusty stuff, water, steam-punk, cogs (running the gamut from teeny-tiny to f***ing enormous), Nazis, CGI Lovecraftian monsters, magick, and jokey one-liners. Unfortunately, Del Toro seems so intent on getting the basic ingredients and aesthetic style for Hellboy precisely how he wants that he forgets all about telling a decent story: his film suffers from a leaden pace, a weak plot full of clichés (one of those story lines that feels like it's being made up on the fly), and zero chemistry between dull characters.On the plus side, the makeup used to transform Ron Perlman into Hellboy is impressive, and although the use of old school animatronic effects stick out like a sore thumb amidst all of the CGI, I enjoyed the resurrected Russian corpse with the noose around its neck. The rest is strictly for Del Toro fan-boys only.