‘Hellboy’ is an action thriller based on the graphic novels of Mike Mignola and the movie franchise of the same name. Directed by Neil Marshall, the 2019 reboot revolves around the lead protagonist, Hellboy, who finds himself caught between the supernatural and human worlds.
After watching an hour of ‘Game of Thrones’ gore in the morning, I had assumed Hellboy would make for a fresh change of mood. Turns out, I had completely missed the ‘R’ rating on the movie and the fact that the director also has some Game of Thrones work under his belt. So, boy, was I in for a surprise!
The movie starts with a husky male voice narrating the plot background, with the camera slowly moving towards the top of a hill. The color isolation in the first scene highlighting the red in Nimue (Milla Jovovich), a sorceress, with a pitch dark background, is simply fantastic. The first scene is really about how King Arthur has the body of Nimue dismembered and scattered in little chests.
Then you’re taken to the present, in Colorado, where we get the first look at Hellboy (David Harbour) clad in a maroon hoodie with rock music blaring from his earbuds; we’re taken to a boxing match. And did I tell you our boy is a product of hell? Given his devilish look, he naturally evokes the crowd’s xenophobia. This scene caught my eye for its fantastic use of translation subtitles: When the characters speak in Spanish, a bright yellow stroke text is displayed in a very natural way.
Our friendly beast has a great sense of humor. Mid-fight, trying to calm his best friend down, he says “remember the old times, you played that acoustic crap, while I played real music?”
Shortly after we are treated to our first gore scene. A beast, seeking revenge on Hellboy, goes on a quest to resurrect Nimue. In this scene, he breaks into a church and kills the priests mercilessly. At times, the thriller feels like a horror movie. When the beast takes out and eats the brain of a priest in order to chant the holy verse I knew how mistaken I was about the movie’s nature.
When the beast brings back the sorceress to life the trio of Hellboy, Alice (Sasha Lane) and Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim) go on an adventure to hunt down the sorceress, with the support of the protagonist’s father Trevor (Ian McShame). Kim, in his character of a martial Japanese-American, gives a wonder performance too.
The movie also has a fair share of ‘fourth wall breaking’, not a new thing since the advent of Deadpool, but Hellboy has it even in serious scenes. Hesitant to kill, Hellboy keeps asking Alice why he should really kill the sorceress. The answer: “To make sure she doesn’t come back for the sequel”. There’s also a fair share of pop culture reference here and there with an old wizard being referred to as Gandalf.
It is a spectacular movie in the first half. Really. It had me with the dark visuals, the gore, the funky rock music, and a clever plot. The second half felt underwhelming though. In this half, character development was poor, the emotional scenes failed to connect with the audience, and the movie just felt bland. I feel that is not the fault of the comic characters but the director.
Movie: Hellboy
Genre: Fantasy/Action
Cast: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim
Direction: Neil Marshall
Rating: 3/5
