Hellboy. 2004. USA. Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, based on characters created by Mike Mignola. With Ron Perlman, Doug Jones, Selma Blair, John Hurt. In English. 35mm. 122 min.
Del Toro’s second superhero movie (after Blade II) stars Ron Perlman—a fixture of his films since Cronos —as the eponymous cigar-chomping antihero, a demon from another dimension who breaches earthen reality at the end of World War II and is adopted by British scientist Trevor Bruttenholm (John Hurt.) Decades later, Hellboy is the star of the US government’s clandestine Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, alongside his pyrokinetic girlfriend Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) and wisecracking amphibian sidekick Abe Sapien (embodied by Doug Jones and voiced by David Hyde Pierce). Cowritten with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, Del Toro’s adaptation testifies to his fascination with noirish shadows and the stuff of nightmares, and is noteworthy for its devotion to the source material. But what makes Hellboy most conspicuous among the deluge of 2000s-era comic book adaptations is its knowingly offbeat sense of humor: the winning ensemble of freaks and their human handlers spend as much time hanging out and talking about their lives as they do fighting black-magic whisperers and occultist Nazis.