Hellboy II: The Golden Army (part 1 of 2) review

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (part 1 of 2)

This Hellboy is visually stunning, bright and a lot of fun. It is certainly more entertaining than the first movie.

Director Guillermo del Toro has a colorful imagination. Hellboy II takes everything that was strange about the first movie and turns it up about 10 points. Most of the more religious background stuff is swept away for a more fantasy story. (Not everything about the fate of Hellboy from the first movie is disregarded. There is a bit of dark foreshadowing about a Hellboy III.)

The world the director creates is on a different level than the real world. It is bright, colorful, and filled with interesting characters and creatures. The movie really starts to pick up when Hellboy encounters this world, which is one of the best things in the film. It feels like the rich areas of Star Wars and the mood that George Lucas attempted to convey in the prequels but failed.

The action seems to build upon itself more and more up to the climax of this scene where a giant plant creature attacks the city.

The opening ‘flashback’ to the actual story behind the Golden Army is done in such a unique manner that I wanted to see more of it. It sums up the terrible nature of The Golden Army and the divide between the Human world and Magical world. It rather reminds me of the beginning of Kung Fu Panda, in that it has a different style from the rest of the movie.

I wasn’t really a fan of the young Hellboy stuff though. They could have done the Golden Army and elf stuff as a flashback within itself and not as told as a story to the young Hellboy.

Now, this is what I call gun control.