Movie Review: 'Hellboy'

DATE April 2, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Filler: By policy of WHYY, this information is restricted and has
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Filler: By policy of WHYY, this information is restricted and has
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Review: New film "Hellboy"
TERRY GROSS, host:

Many people remember Ron Perlman as the beast in the late-80s TV series
"Beauty and the Beast," in which he played a poetic lion-man who lived amongst
society's outcasts in a subterranean lair beneath New York. Perlman is back
underground in the new movie "Hellboy" in heavy makeup playing a monster who's
also an ace monster hunter for the FBI. Film critic David Edelstein has a
review.

DAVID EDELSTEIN reporting:

Last year, I got to see "The Rings" cycle--not the Wagner, the Tolkien--all
three Peter Jackson epics back to back in one day, and I talked to a young
woman, someone who'd waited in line for 12 hours, who said, `Jackson gets
Tolkien. He's a fan. The problem with George Lucas is that he's not a fan
of "Star Wars," so he doesn't understand what people who grew up with "Star
Wars" love about "Star Wars."'

Now I admit this is counterintuitive. George Lucas, who created "Star Wars,"
shouldn't make anymore "Star Wars" movies because he didn't grow up loving
"Star Wars?" That's nutty, right? Well, as a general principal it might be,
but I think in this case, she's dead on. And I think Guillermo del Toro, the
39-year-old Mexican-born director and writer of "Hellboy," is another fan-boy
who gets it. A brilliant filmmaker who has a kind of metabolic connection to
horror and sci-fi that helps him transform second-hand material into something
deep and nourishing, even Wagnerian.

Which brings us to that delightful "Hellboy." Hellboy is a superhero who is
literally the spawn of hell, ushered into this world by Nazis in collaboration
with Rasputin, the mad monk, all of whom want to unleash the seven gods of
chaos. Lucky for us--huh!--the allies, led by Professor Bruttenholm,
played by John Hurt, manage to shut down that infernal portal. The lone demon
that gets through is a little smiling thing with horns and a tail and a taste
for Baby Ruth candy bars. The soldiers name him Hellboy, and the professor
raises him, awkwardly, as his own son.

And 60 years later, he's still sort of an adolescent, albeit a huge one,
played by the marvelous Ron Perlman in a big-jawed red mask with a giant stone
hand. Hellboy lives in the basement of a secret FBI compound where the agents
battle supernatural enemies. `There are things that go bump in the night,'
explains the professor, `and we are the ones who bump back.' Here's John Hurt
explaining the agency's mission to a young recruit played by Rupert Evans,
whom he's grooming to be Hellboy's new minder. We've just met a
superintelligent fish-man, known as Abe Sapien. Now it's time to enter the
vault of Hellboy.

(Soundbite of "Hellboy")

Mr. JOHN HURT: (As Professor Bruttenholm) 1937, Hitler joins the Thule
Society, a group of German aristocrats obsessed with the occult. 1938, he
acquired the spear of Longinus, which pierced the side of Christ. He who
holds it becomes invincible. 1943, President Roosevelt decides to fight back,
the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense is born.

(Soundbite of door being opened)

Unidentified Man: Well, come on in. Meet the rest of the family. He gets
fed six times a day. He's got a thing for cats. He never goes out
unsupervised.

Mr. RUPERT EVANS: Who?

Mr. RON PERLMAN: (As Hellboy) I hate those comic books. They never get the
eyes right.

EDELSTEIN: They're talking about a "Hellboy" comic book at the end, and like
that comic, the movie comes from a distinct emotional place, that feeling of
adolescent outsiderness that drives kids to live through superhero comics and
dream of turning their freakishness into an asset. Perlman's Hellboy is a
wonderful creation: half macho cigar-chomping Marine, half melancholy monster
who knows he doesn't belong in this world. He sands down his horns to fit in,
but he still can't go out among real people, and he has a girlfriend who keeps
breaking up with him and pulling him back. She's a fire starter, played by
Selma Blair, looking dark and closed down, like a female poet with scars on
her wrists. They're a beautiful match, though, because he can't be injured by
her infernos, which seems to me a great metaphor for those incendiary
relationships that actually improbably work.

The plot? Well, the Nazis and Rasputin are back with these squidlike
tentacled hell hounds that lay hundreds of eggs, but I'm not gonna tell you
this is a high water mark in the art of film narrative. But the
action--computer-generated as a lot of it is--is thunderous, shocking without
being especially graphic. And del Toro is Hellboy. His movies, from his
low-budget vampire classic "Cronos" to the studio-mangled "Mimic" to the
tragic Spanish civil war ghost story "The Devil's Backbone" are set in
subterranean caverns and dank, rusting subway tunnels that evoke a morbid
spiritual dislocation. Del Toro must feel at home down there, because no one
makes monster movies with such soulful grunge. What you call hell, he calls
heaven.

GROSS: David Edelstein is film critic for the online magazine Slate.
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