Hellboy 2: The Golden Army B

Having prepped myself last month by renting the original Hellboy, when The Golden Army dropped I called up Brother-of-Priest and we struck out for nearest Cineplex, wondering what Guillermo del Toro could do with a bigger budget and more freedom. Answer: Lots (and lots) of cool monsters. Looking like a mix between the Cantina scene in Star Wars and Harry Potter’s first trip to Diagon Valley, a sizable chunk of the budget is on display on a ten-minute trip to the fantastical, monster-heavy Troll Market. What isn’t on display in this follow-up is the even tone of its predecessor. While the first struck just the right balance between playing it straight and laughing at itself, this one veers back and forth, now too whimsical, now taking itself too seriously. Also missing is a tight plot (admittedly, not a hallmark of the original either). This one suffers in trying to set up another sequel, introducing characters and subplots that go nowhere before veering back on course.

The back story is provided by an eye-popping animated piece couched as a children’s story (another animated version of which functioned as a trailer for the film. See it here). In a pre-historic time, power-hungry humans are ravaging elves and other mythical creatures in a war that ends in a truce after the creation of an unstoppable Golden Army by the elves. Alas, the humans have ignored their half of the truce (a small nod to environmental concerns here), and a Prince from this by-gone kingdom has returned to awaken the army and return the world to the hands of its other inhabitants. Naturally, Hellboy (an again excellent Ron Perlman) and his FBI-employed band of paranormal misfits stand in his way. Returning are on-fire (literally) Salma Blair as Liz, Doug Jones as fish-man Abe Sapien (this time also doing his voice), John Hurt as Hellboy’s pops, and Jeffrey Tambor as the FBI man trying to lead the operation. Added to the mix is voice expert Seth MacFarlene (“Stewie” from TV's Family Guy) providing the voice of the German-born Tom Manning, a para-normal creature in his own right, employed by the government to keep Red and company on a leash.

As in all del Toro’s films, the visuals are stunning. There’s a nifty little crane shot just up the Doctor’s alley, and the cinematography on the whole is way better than the average creature feature. But what’s got me thinking after this one is how he’s crammed his movie full of Biblical references. Crosses are ubiquitous (Liz wears a prominent one around her throat that glows when she catches on fire, Red carries a rosary on his wrist like a bracelet, a neon sign of one is in nearly every frame of a battle against an ancient woodland god), the characters off-handedly quote scripture, and the parallels to the Adam and Eve narrative in the opening story are undeniable. Del Toro wrestles with the trappings of a monotheistic faith in a pluralistic world that bares striking resemblance to our own. In this film he seems to be playing with it, never really exploring it, allowing it to stay in the background. While he offers some intriguing glimpses of where he’d go with this as a major sub-theme, I’d love to see him explore it more fully in a future piece.

No matter its theology, it’s a fun film if you’re into things that go bump in the night. I’m looking forward to Del Toro helming a non-sequel, non-prequel original film again, but this will do until he gets around to it. B