‘Hellboy 2: The Golden Army’ Review
Written by Ender on August 28, 2008 · Filed under Review, TV/Movies
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (12A)
Cast: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Luke Goss, Anna Walton, John Hurt
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Running Time: 120 minutes
Guillermo Del Toro films are always a joy to watch. He tries to use as little CGI as possible and creates some visually stunning characters. Hellboy 2 is, in my opinion, one of his best to date.
The story sees Hellboy (Perlman) sick of being in hiding and wants the world to see who he and his team are, and what they do. His relationship has ‘blossomed’ with Liz (Blair) but they’re going through the ‘bumpy’ part of the relationship which has some nice touches throughout the film.
Abe Sapien is back to help Red along the way and is the brains of the group. As always with sequels, new characters are introduced. Johann Krauss, a German scientist joins the team. But in typical Hellboy fashion, he’s special.
Krauss is a gas entity being who wears a special suit, but can release himself from the suit to control living and mechanical beings.
One of the funniest moments of the film is when Krauss and Hellboy have a little scuffle!
The main villain this time around is Prince Nuada (Goss) who wants to raise the Golden Army from their resting place and wage war on the human race as he sees them as a disease of the earth and the ones who haven betrayed their side of a treaty forged many years ago between the Elves and Humans.
Goss is brilliant and it’s hard to believe he was in the band ‘Bros.’. He continually kicks ass throughout the film with the fight against some guards in the Elven kingdom one of the best sequences of the film.
What I liked about the action was you were able to see what was going on. Unlike other films when they think that moving the camera faster and giving you a migraine and blurred vision the better option.
The Troll Market, which has a huge amount of strange looking fantasy creatures and a very small amount are CG characters, is amazing with a huge explosion of colours and it looks stunning.
Hellboy 2 is a lot cheesier than the first and I thought that certain parts could have been left out and were a bit unnecessary. There was about 15 minutes where I actually was really bored and it really surprised me that I felt like that during a Del Toro movie. But don’t let that put you off, the rest of the films is great fun.
I loved the first Hellboy, but I’m still undecided whether this is better than the first.
3 out of 5
Ender
