hellboy II - the golden army

I found the first hellboy to be enjoyable fair.

It had it's flaws, to be sure, but I thought as comic-book adaptations go, hellboy was entertaining enough.

Hellboy 2 is a direct sequel, made by the same director, Guillermo del Torro. Del Torro is probably one of the most imaginative and creative people working in film today. He has a simply amazing visual sense, but also manages to team this with a superb narrative style and strong story-telling ethic.

Proof of this abounds - Blade 2 is by far the best of the Blade films, both visually and from the story-telling point of view, for example. Then there's Pan's Labyrinth, a film I didn't quite see eye-to-eye with, but one that was dripping with gorgeous visuals.

Hellboy II therefore kinda shows-up the first film. Although I personally enjoyed it for what it was, this second film really emphasises what was missing from the first to make it truly great - del Torro himself.

I remember in the first film's commentary del Torro kept going on about how much of a Hellboy fan he was and how he'd strived to transfer Mike Mignola's characters to the big screen as faithfully as he could. And it worked - they're good characters - but what that therefore mean the first film was missing was a true del Torro-ness.

I'm struggling to explain this, to be frank, but in Hellboy II, del Torro really seems to have let himself go and infused the film with his style. But there's more - in the first he treated the Hellboy world with the utmost respect, whereas in the second it's more like he's expressing his love for the characters.

Does that make sense? So if the first film was reverential and slightly dry and stand-offish because of the respect, then this film is up-close and personal because we're getting a glimpse into the soul of its creator.

That's a bit over the top, but you get the idea.

The film is also staggeringly brave in places.

For example, there's a sequence where Hellboy has to fight an elemental. The elemental grows huge and is destroying the city in its attempts to kill Hellboy.

Hellboy fights back and shoots it and effectively has it on-the-ropes when the villain appears and explains that this is the last of its kind - if he kills it, he ends a race.

Even though this is a block-buster type movie there are shades of grey here. Protect the humans and the city (that is the humans who hate and fear Hellboy and his compatriots) by ending an entire race - it's an intelligent, thoughtful moment where traditionally you would not be presented with anything of the kind.