Rating of
3/4
"Hellboy 2: The Golden Army" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 12/23/11
The infernal superhero and his team reunite to stop an elfin prince from reawakening a dormant robotic army to wage war on mankind. One thing that you can take for granted when it comes to films by Del Toro is that it IS going to look absolutely fantastic, and so it does. The wonderful art design shares the look of some of his earlier gothic fairytales such as Pan's Labyrinth, as well as the combination of fantasy and eco-message that is the trademark of Myazaki (the most visually extraordinary example being the stunning death of the forest elemental.) The troll's market is also worth a mention, which is akin to a Tim Burton reinvention of Mos Eisley, but as I said, we always knew that the imagery was never going to be in question. The story has a combination of fantastic creatures, epic battles and Men In Black style visual gags that comes across as The Return Of The King with a sense of humour. The jokes aren't top drawer, but it's always amusing and the frenetic action sequences are exciting and fun. Perlman is as reliable as always and Luke Goss once more is a charismatic and multi-layered bad guy, the only real weaknesses being the corn infested love interests; in fact I couldn't help thinking that the darker edges of Del Toro's vision were probably tempered in an attempt to appeal to the Harry Potter market. As a whole though, it's a lot of fun and as always seems to be the way with superhero movies is rather better than the first one.
