In 1944, U.S. military adviser Dr. Trevor Broom swept up a little red creature with knobby horns, a long tail and a right mitt like a sledgehammer.
The demon was nicknamed Hellboy. The moniker stuck, and Broom raised the youngster to work against his own destiny: That oversized fist is a key to unlock the portal between the human and nether worlds. Open the lock, destroy humankind. At the time of Hellboy’s discovery, the Nazis were planning to exploit his potential.
Instead, like so many freaks of the superhero genre, HB took a shine to humans, starting with adopted father Broom (John Hurt).
He and other members of a clandestine governmental agency have our backs.
In the creature-packed, touchingly maudlin sequel, “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” humans seem more than a little ungrateful and not quite worthy of the protection that Hellboy, girlfriend Liz Sherman, Abe Sapien and other denizens of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense in New Jersey offer.
And when a truce between humans, elves and other beings relegated to invisible realms is sundered by a prince wearing Edgar Winter hair, we need someone who bumps back the “things that go bump in the night.”
From the start, actor Ron Perlman has made Hellboy’s personality a droll mix of bravado and boneheadedness. In the original, he got jealous and acted out. Here, he’s constantly flummoxed by Liz’s domestic demands.
He likes the spotlight a bit too much for a secret weapon, a constant source of aggravation for Agent Manning (Jeffrey Tambor), his FBI handler.
Hellboy’s can-do attitude undercut with teen-fella insecurity has made the cigar-puffing baddie a sweetheart, too. Emotionally, he’s all too human. If there’s a letdown from the original, also directed by Guillermo del Toro and based on Mike Mignola’s Dark Horse comic book series, it’s that there’s just not enough of the right stuff for the big red lug.
You’d have to have a tin ear not to hear the theological musings about fathers, fate and free will at the heart of the first “Hellboy.”
Perhaps this is a strange thing to declare of a movie in which the army of the title would lay waste to mankind, were it unleashed. Yet for all its marshaling of otherworldly forces, “The Golden Army” remains a little lighter and a little less satisfying than 2004’s big-screen introduction to a terrific comic-book character.
Now he and Liz (Selma Blair) live together, and things are tense. When your gal’s a pyrokinetic wonder still honing control of her firestarter gifts, well. . . .
At times, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) seems less irrational than righteously furious at humankind’s abuse of Earth’s resources. This adds a not-ironed-out wrinkle to the story line. The Nazis of the first “Hellboy” were undeniable baddies. Moral certainty seems clouded in del Toro and Mignola’s story.
Between the first “Hellboy” and “The Golden Army,” director Del Toro made a masterpiece: “Pan’s Labyrinth,” a fable about a young girl, a faun and the horror of fascist Spain.
Besides the creepy-crawly ick-cool factor of the “tooth faeries” that attack in the opening scenes of this “Hellboy,” there’s not much hoped-for carry-over between the Oscar-garnering film and this romp.
The PG-13 “Hellboy” is fun. And it’s unafraid to embrace the schmaltzy. Empath Abe Sapien (incomparable Doug Jones) is smitten with Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), twin to Prince Nuada. And the movie has some fabulous sport with a Barry Manilow hit.
“The Golden Army” is a sturdy comic-book-inspired outing with a couple of very amusing asides, including a tour of a troll market.
But Perlman, del Toro and Mignola have made Hellboy such a fine brute and hero that it’s hard not to want more from any story that contains him.
“Hellboy II: The Golden Army”
PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and some language. 1 hour, 50 minutes; from the comic book by Mike Mignola; photography by Guillermo Navarro; starring Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, John Alexander, James Dodd, Seth MacFarlane, Luke Goss, Anna Walton, Jeffrey Tambor. Opens today at area theaters.
