With the Oscar winning adult fable Pan's Labyrinth, director Guillermo del Toro demonstrated a gift for mixing intricately grotesque creatures with sharply observed human characters. With Hellboy II, the sequel to the pre-Pan's comic book flick that put del Toro on the American commercial cinema radar, he spreads his wings even further as an imaginative visual innovator but loses his grip slightly as a razor-sharp storyteller.If The Golden Army has a flaw, it is that it is overstuffed with geniusly weird and twisted supernatural flourishes. Each character possesses perfectly realized attributes, ranging from functional physical form to believably real setbacks. The brutish lead Hellboy (Ron Perlman), though a super charged demon from hell, feels insecure and therefore files down his massive horns to meek stubs. In other words, the monsters here can be more human than the humans sometimes. It is with these rich details that the film distinguishes itself from the herd of comic book cannon fodder. Nevertheless, The Golden Army often lets its eccentricities take center stage when attention needs to be paid to the bigger picture. The narrative flow of the film is sullied and nearly crushed by the obsessive compulsive quirk of del Toro's grand and sweeping vision. The story, about an indestructible ancient militia and the vicious prince seeking to resurrect them, is utterly epic and at times del Toro has too much attention placed on the small charms of this world. Rather than hustling forward with wit and warmth along the way, he shaves off some momentum here and there to make room for all the little oddities that make Hellboy such a fun property to begin with. Alas, every now and then, good material needs to go.
What makes this a winning follow up is the delicate poetry of del Toro's imaginative alternate world. In one scene, an action scene no less, del Toro hits strides of moral ambiguity, adrenaline uplift, and quiet meditation. The evil Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) unleashes an "elemental" on the city, inciting chaos when a giant, plant-like creature the size of a sky scraper begins ravaging the streets below. Nuada prompts Hellboy, a tortured public figure and outcast, to consider the situation before he makes his move. He and his "elemental" offer a life of acceptance, but to defend the humans would mean a continued life of torment and exile. Hellboy chooses humanity, and perhaps stupidly so. The film does not affirmatively endorse our race as superiors. In killing the "elemental" the streets become bathed in its blood, fluid from its veins. Flakes of dispersed pollen drift down to the city below and land with the gentleness of snowflakes. And in this silent moment, the people below take in the beauty of the sight, bewildered by the violence that created it.
Underneath all of this visual poetry is a very practical truth: Hellboy II probably has the most beautiful and perfectly created sets, costumes, make-up, and effects of any film in this or any year. Having guided Pan's Labyrinth to a triple Oscar win for such technical categories, del Toro has more than proven himself gifted with assembling talented costumers, art directors, make-up artists, and many others with essential but often overlooked film set professions. If there is any justice he should see his team take home even more trophies this fall. Haunting creations such as a winged, many-eyed angel of death (Doug Jones, also Abe Sapien and The Chamberlain here) and the gaunt, saucer-eyed Princess Nuala (Anna Walton in elaborately conceived costume and makeup) are an essential part of what allows this feature to function with such grace and still remain, essentially an action packed adventure for the ages.
Grade: B+
