Hellboy II: The Golden Army

(2007)
review by A.J. MacReady

The first time I ever saw a Guillermo del Toro film was back in the summer of '96, when my friends and I caught Mimic.  I actually had a good time with it, and thought it was - for a creature feature, basically - well done with some good scares and effective FX and design.  After seeing Blade II, the man was definitely on my radar, and I distinctly remember watching The Devil's Backbone a few months later at home and thinking "This guy's got some serious moves."  Well, the original Hellboy and then Pan's Labyrinth seem to have solidified that in my mind - for my money, there's really no one out there right now making movies like del Toro does.  He loves the grotesque and the darkness, but possesses a sweetness and soul that make all the arguments about whether or not genre flicks can have a head AND a heart along with the creepy-crawlies pretty much worthless and wholly without merit.

After having such a blast with the first Hellboy, a phenomenal comic-book outing based on the great series by Mike Mignola, I really hoped that del Toro would raise the bar a bit with the sequel; go further and up the ante, if you will.  I had no way of knowing that my hopes would be FAR surpassed with Hellboy II: The Golden Army - if you liked the first one, you should absolutely adore this flick.  Everything the first one had, such as great characters, FX work, humor, action and adventure, even a touch of lost and lonely romantic longing - we've got all of that here, just more of it.  That's the best way to put it, I think; all the great aspects of the first movie, but MORE.  How can you not love that?

Our heroes are still working for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense - which of course is in New Jersey - and Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) are now in a relationship that doesn't always go smoothly.  Well, most don't, but as you might imagine, theirs is perhaps a bit. . .difficult.  Abe Sapien (Doug Jones, handling vocal duties this time around as well) is still the quiet, competent, soulful aquatic empath and fan favorite; Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) remains the blowhard bureaucrat, despised and tormented by Hellboy.  Unknown to this motley crew, the fantastical denizens of the forests are plotting their revenge.  It seems that man made a truce with the elves and trolls years before, after a bloody war (beautifully rendered in a pre-credits flashback sequence that brings John Hurt back as Professor Bruttenholm) almost wiped all of them out.  The deal was:  men get the cities, the elves get the forests.  Now, after man has gone back on his word and seemingly thought, "Isn't that a lovely meadow?  I'll bet a parking lot or business park would look great there," Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) has decided enough is enough.  He will find the last piece of an ancient crown, one that will allow him to control The Golden Army, created for the last war and now lying dormant and unused.  With their power, he will wage war once again on mankind, and they will regret having gone back on their word.  Yet his sister, Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), does not share his sentiment, and escapes with the crown piece, looking for help where there is none to be found. . .unless you count the BPRD, that is.

Honestly, this flick is amazing.  It's thematically deep and while I get that Nuada is the antagonist, I could never fault his logic; he's completely right in the terms of his own outlook.  He's not doing it to end the world - he's doing it to ensure the survival of his kind.  It's visually stunning, just completely beautiful to behold.  del Toro goes above and beyond here, and you'll see that the man simply cannot be faulted for his eye.  Nor his heart, as the two main love stories - that of Hellboy and Liz, and Abe finding, to his own surprise, that he has fallen for Nuala and will do anything for her - are moving, touching, and entirely bittersweet.  Our heroes learn that there is no love without regret, and no pleasure without pain; the price to pay may be steep, but they'll pay it, and gladly, for that love.  The action sequences are top-notch and about as thrilling as they come in these big-budget comic book extravaganzas (the final fight between Hellboy and Nuada in particular is the finest throwdown I've seen del Toro pull off yet; high praise indeed, which you'll understand if you've seen Blade II).  The Troll Market, already hailed as the next coming of Star Wars' Mos Eisley sequence is. . .well, basically that.  It's a feast for the eyes that has me counting the days until this hits DVD so I can go frame by frame and see all the amazing costumes and creatures that lurk around the edges, in the background, everywhere. 

The cast continues to be the glue that holds these exuberant, sometimes messy but always exhilarating flicks together.  As Hellboy, Ron Perlman displays exactly why he's regarded as a character actor par excellence.  There's not a single person, in my mind, that could play this part anywhere NEAR as well as he does.  The blue collar attitude, the snarky one-liners delivered perfectly, the little-boy-lost quality that permeates his interactions with Liz, and the utter and complete badassery that add up to Hellboy are never steered in a single wrong direction.  He is perfect in the role, and I am beyond thankful for it.  Blair is also superb, once again, and is given a bit more to do this time around - which I am also thankful for.  Abe Sapien, the creation not just of the FX wizards but of performer Doug Jones, has the most surprising (and heartbreaking) arc this go-round, and the movie is richer for developing his character further.  Goss and Walton, as the twin elf siblings, play their parts with elegance and style and actually FEEL like their characters - as fantastic as they are - might actually exist somewhere.  Not just in our imaginations, but in a place that the world needs, somehow.  Oh, and then there's the new character of Johann Krauss, brought to the BPRD by Manning (Tambor is just as slimy and boobish as ever, and still a joy to watch) to straighten things up a bit.  Would it surprise you if I said that Krauss is basically a cloud of gas inside a old-time diver's suit?  Or that he's voiced to near-perfection by Seth McFarlane, abusing a German accent?  Yeah, it didn't surprise me either.  It's all just loads of fun and pathos and thrills, and all of these actors are mostly responsible for it.

Except for the one man who is almost completely responsible for it; that would be del Toro himself.  I can't say enough about the man, how he seems to have been given to us by the geek gods to show us sights and sounds and make us clap and giggle like the children we hold so dear inside ourselves.  He is able to do that because he is one of us.  He makes movies that he himself would wish to see, and has been blessed with the talent and drive to put those before us, as much for his pleasure as ours.  This is a man with the imagination and love for these stories and these characters - for these worlds - that is big enough to dwarf even his largest and most terrifying creations.  I love his sense of humor and his generosity, and since I could literally go on and on about him, will close by saying that he's the first filmmaker in a very long time that I have decided to follow wherever he goes, knowing that wherever he takes me, it will be to see things I've never seen and give me experiences I've never had.  The things I never knew I was missing in my life, but needed so much.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is easily one of the best things I've ever seen in a theater in my entire life.  It reminds me of what movies are capable of.  The sense of wonder they can give you and the joy inside that can't help but sing when you realize it's got just the right touch to play that instrument that you possess.  This is, of course, merely my opinion, and my reaction to it, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.  It is a wonderful piece of art - and to paraphrase a character in the film, without works such as this, the world would be lesser for it.