Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Guillermo del Toro, USA / Germany, 2008
3.5 out of 4 stars

I was greatly relieved to see that this film actually was a tremendous improvement upon its predecessor; the potential was clearly there in the firs tone, and it was finally lived up to here! I would go so far as to say that if you haven’t seen either film, you could go ahead and just see this one, as I don’t think that the sequence is particularly crucial here (a prologue sequence primarily sets up the plot but also gets viewers up to speed on the premise).

Just as I had read, there were in fact many more monsters in this film, part of an overall improvement in visual effects and all-out imaginativeness. The fight scenes are filmed more dynamically, and have more variety in how they are carried out. The pacing is worlds better than it was before; whereas before I was frequently bored by the languid scenes of character interactions, here I was laughing quite frequently, and I was otherwise invested in what happened to the characters. The plot is much more interesting, but also much less convoluted, and the villain, while still not portrayed by the most compelling actor, at least has a stronger motivation and a more interesting and even poignant scheme.

Finally, to only is Rupert Evans’ putrid “regular guy” character gone, but there is no attempt to create another character to take his place. Instead, Jeffrey Tambor is given more screen time in his often-hilarious role as the hapless, incompetent human handler of the “weirdos,” and in his case, I thought they did a good job of building upon his relationship with Hellboy as it stood at the end of the last one.

That does however lead to the one complaint I had, which is that the principle characters’ attitudes regarding regular human agents of the BPRD (Hellboy’s bureau), already somewhat callous before, has become starker, particularly in the beginning of the film, and whereas Hellboy at least was chastised for it then, it goes completely unremarked upon here. While I understand that his character is supposed to have some sort of “edge,” it doesn’t quite work with his colleagues. It might be peevish to object to the time-honored use of canon fodder, and I’m not doing so on grounds of “realism” (the female lead should have been killed within the first 10 minutes, but it’s not as if I actually want to see that), but more on moral grounds, as the idea that the non-special people are expendable is one that, in fact, I do find objectionable.

Source: Universal 35mm print
4 Aug, 8 PM