Hellboy II: The Golden Army

The story arc devised by del Toro and
Mignola starts with a nifty prologue set at Christmastime 1955, as the
tween-age Hellboy listens to a bizarre bedtime story recited by his
benefactor, Professor Buttenholm (John Hurt in a brief appearance),
that reveals a centuries-old truce between humankind and the
underground Elven forces. (In a film brimming with visual correlations,
note the crimson-skinned youngster wearing a 1950s-era western gun belt
with a cowboy cap pistol. Fifty years later, the adult Hellboy (Ron
Perlman) will be toting a Jack Kirby-esque firearm for some big-bang
action.) 

Roll out the barrels: Ron Perlman in Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

The bedtime story, however, is rooted in
reality, which becomes obvious when Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), evil son
of the Elven King, wants to wipe out humanity. To accomplish this, he
must track down three pieces of a splintered crown that, when unified,
will resurrect the gizmo-laden Golden Army, a gaggle of hermetically
sealed mechanical warriors, to clank across Mother Earth’s topside.
Attempting to stop the madness is the kindly Princess Nuada (Anne
Walton), but her very close familial connection is also a liability.
Because she is his psychically linked twin sister, Hellboy can’t give
the prince a savage pummeling because it will directly harm her.

Get past the central story, however, and
you’ll discover where del Toro’s deployment of directorial carte
blanche really kicks in. The domestic scenes between Hellboy, an unholy
cross between Marvel Comics’ Ben “The Thing” Grimm and Harvey Comics’
Hot Stuff, and his incendiary sweetie Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) are
handled with snarky, brittle humor. Liz is tiring of Hellboy’s downtime
antics (entailing his fondnesses for Baby Ruth candy bars, kittens and
Cuban cigars) and needs some breathing room, but that’s not easy to
obtain since both work for a Trenton, N.J.-based, top-secret agency
devoted to paranormal activities. 

Such fractious behavior also places
their co-worker and mutual buddy, aquatic empath Abe Sapien (Doug
Jones), between the pair’s sniping line of fire. As the trio
investigate a Manhattan auction house devoid of upper-class bidders,
Abe surmises that their disappearance is the result of carnivorous
Tooth Fairies from the third century: “There are no survivors because
there are no corpses. {The Fairies} eat and poop and eat again.” To
which Liz replies in a sour gibe aimed at Hellboy, “Sound familiar?”
Unlike the noirish seriousness found in this summer’s other pop culture
blockbusters, del Toro’s lighthearted sense of humor keeps Hellboy II on its feet and happily dancing.

Hellboy II’s maverick characters also suit del Toro’s persona, a director who can easily segue between art-house projects (The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth) to mainstream fare (Mimic, Blade II)
without selling his artistic soul in the process. At one point Hellboy
wants to out himself from the fed’s covert operation, much to the
dismay of bureau chief Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor), who has been busy
squelching tabloid fodder regarding Hellboy sightings. (“God, I hate
YouTube,” he opines.) 

Yet even Hellboy ultimately agrees with
Prince Nuada’s statement that they’re both outsiders, with virtually no
chance at blending within the human fabric. But that doesn’t stop the
good-guy mutants from trying: During del Toro’s biggest risk for comedy
and pathos, Hellboy and Abe (the latter having fallen for Princess
Nuada’s charms) drunkenly commiserate over their hearts’ desires, their
sappiness further exacerbated by the poetry of Tennyson and Barry
Manilow.

New to Hellboy II’s party is
bureau superior Johann Krauss, a headless mystic whose ethereal
presence is bottled within a glass helmet in an outfit that recalls
Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet. (He’s voiced in a Col. Klink style by Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane.) That similarity is probably deliberate, since del Toro also tosses in clips from Bride of Frankenstein and Creature from the Black Lagoon, as well as a movie marquee heralding See You Next Wednesday,
the running gag in all movies directed by John Landis. Even Hellboy’s
streetside battle with a lumbering Elemental, a celery-stalk forest god
capable of knocking over buildings, feels like a king-size walking
tribute to The Day of the Triffids. 

While David Hyde Pierce’s Tony
Randall-esque patter as Abe, an uncredited bit of business from the
2004 movie, is missing from this installment (Jones provides his own
voice), there’s dazzling compensation aplenty from del Toro’s cinematic
sense of the fantastic—which means his next project, a much-anticipated
filming of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, is in good hands. For further
proof, revel in the eye-filling details as Hellboy and Abe investigate
a troll market that lurks somewhere in the fantasy realm underneath the
Brooklyn Bridge, as misshapen, unglamorous whatzits who aren’t quite
what they seem stud the landscape. One creature lugs what appears to be
a wisecracking kid, but the monstrous moppet claims otherwise: “I’m not
a baby: I’m a tumor!”

Universal Studios Home Entertainment offers the DVD release of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
in single-, triple- and Blu-Ray disc permutations, with commentary
tracks, mini-documentaries and deleted scenes galore. Alas, none of
them were available for perusal at press time.