Reel commentary: ....Prepare yourself for one HELL of a ride. One that leaves you breathless and wanting more. Let's hope there's a sequel, and real soon.....full review
By Mermaid (Guest Critic) I went into my screening of the new Columbia Pictures movie Hellboy pretty much on the blind side. I don't know anything about Hellboy, in fact I've never read any of the comic books, so I had no idea what to expect. What I got was two fun filled hours of solid action and entertainment.
The movie begins in 1944 Scotland during World War II. American GI's are searching for rumored Nazi activity and they run into a strange ceremony being conducted by a small group of German soldiers. They are trying to conjure up an evil force that Hitler needs to help him conquer the world. Helping one of the Nazi soldiers is Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden), an evil monk long thought dead. Rasputin is trying to open a gateway so that he can unleash hell on earth. His plans however are foiled by allied forces and Professor Broom (John Hurt). As Rasputin gets sucked into the gateway's vortex, left behind is a red baby demon with small horns and a long red tail.
The GI's at first sight draw their guns on the baby, but the professor tells them to stop and get a blanket. The baby demon is then coaxed into the arms of the professor by a Baby Ruth candy bar and taken back to New York where the professor raises the Red one as if he were his own son.
Born from evil, Hellboy (Ron Perlman) stays with professor Broom and is raised to fight evil as an investigator for the government agency known as B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense). The professor helps Hellboy develop his extraordinary paranormal gifts, in spite of what he was born to do.
The professor gets Hellboy a companion in the way of FBI agent John Myers (Rupert Evans). Myers is then introduced to the rest of the family Hellboy grew up with, including: "Fish-Man" Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), and Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) who is pyrokinetic, and Hellboy's love interest. Despite Hellboy's tough guy facade, and his constant smoking of a cigar, he has a softer side. One which involves his living quarters at the agency, where he has a menagerie of cats that he is quite fond of. They roam all over his room, sleep, and eat with him. (If you need a bathroom break, or run to the refreshment stand now's the time, because from this point on, it's non-stop action that you won't want to miss).
After Myers meets the clan, all HELL breaks loose. Rasputin returns to reclaimHellboy. He needs him to return to the dark side and use his powers to bring about Armageddon.
There are so many exciting scenes from this point, so I will only mention a few. There is a sequence where Hellboy fights the hound of the resurrection, "Sammael." Every time he kills him, another two Sammaels are born, making his fight much tougher each time. There's also another character Kroenan, a Nazi, sword-fighting assassin. That can easily throw Hellboy through walls, etc.
Hellboy features great CGI/Special effects, a great supporting cast of players, and even depth of character development. We get to know all these characters in a really short period of time. We have all sorts of stories going on within Hellboy - it's a story of a father/son (professor and Hellboy), the companionship of the FBI agent and the Red Man, and the love story between Hellboy and Liz. There is also some funny dialogue from Hellboy that gives him a human touch.
Hellboy delivers on all accounts. The film is directed by Guillermo del Toro, and is based on the comic book by Mike Mignola. The voice of Abe Sapien is David Hyde-Pierce. The budget for this film was sixty million, and it took six years in the making.
Prepare yourself for one HELL of a ride. One that leaves you breathless and wanting more. Let's hope there's a sequel, and real soon. Mermaid
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Screen formats: Widescreen 1.85:1.
Subtitles: English; French; Closed Captioned
Language and Sound: English: Dolby Digital 5.1; French: Dolby Digital 5.1
Other Features: Color; interactive menus; scene access; onscreen look at Hellboy comic books with the creator; on-set featurettes; storyboards; four short films; cast commentary; director's commentary; animated scene breakdowns; deleted scenes; scene deconstruction; making-of documentary; storyboard to film comparisons; TV spots; poster explorations for theatrical campaign; filmographies; trailers.
Disc 1:
Introduction: 25 second introduction featuring director Guillermo del Toro telling us what we will find on disc 1.
Commentaries:
Featuring Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignolaas they discuss with other selected cast members the more technical aspects of the film including how the movie relates to the comic book story.
Features Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor and Rupert Evans as they discuss the more personal and less technical issues of making the movie.
Featurettes:
DVD Comics - Features 8 new Hellboy stories drawn by Mike Mignola and written by Guillermo del Toro. The 8 comics featured are: Abe Sapien
Ragnarok: The Gate of the Dragon
The Samaritan
Hellboy's Belt: The Talismans
Pancakes
Hellboy Scrapbook
Rasputin: A Short Biography
Kroenen
Right Hand of Doom - Behind-the-scenes briefs from the film's production. A branching option is available for The Right Hand of Doom Set Visits, or if chose you can view the featurettes separately via a menu selection. The shorts featured are: Abbey Ruins
Brooms Office
Machen Library Alley
Subway Station
Subway Tunnels
Kroenen's Lair
Egg Chamber
Catacombs
Storyboards - branching extra that features the film's storyboards drawn by Simeon Wilkins.
From the Den: Hellboy Recommends - a set of animated shorts including 3 Gerald McBoing Boing pieces from the '50s, and Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-tale Heart.
Trailers: Forced trailer at beginning of disc 1 for the upcoming thriller The Forgotten.
DVD-Rom: Includes a printable original screenplay, script supervisor's notebook and bits and pieces from del Toro's personal notes.
Disc 2:
Introduction: 33 second introduction featuring Selma Blair telling us how disc 2 is divided up into 4 sections.
Sections:
The Egg Chamber: Contains the 2 1/2 minute documentary entitled:
Hellboy: The Seeds of Creation that covers among other things conceptual art transition to film, pre-production work, visual effects, makeup, and creature effects.
Deleted Scenes - 5 minutes worth of outtakes with optional commentary by director del Toro. The scenes are entitled: Breaking the Ice Wall, Cab Ride, and Russian Warehouse.
Character Bios and Filmographies.
Kroenen's Lair:
Scene Progression - Takes a look at pre-production details hosted by del Toro
Animatics - 6-minutes worth of shorts hosted by del Toro who describes exactly what animatics are. The 4 animatic sequences are Hellboy and Sammael: West Side Street; Hellboy and Sammael: Subway; Hellboy and Abe: Underwater Chamber and Behemoth.
Board-A-Matics - Features five animated storyboards that take a look at the construction of some of the film's action sequences. The five sequences shown here are:B.P.R.D. Lift; The Bridge; Bellamie Hospital; Hellboy: Rooftop; Supported Beam Tunnel.
Storyboard Comparisons - compares initial story concepts with the final scene.
Maquette Video Gallery:A collection of 3-dimensional character models (maquettes) with an option to pull-up an enlarged view. The maquettes offered are: Baby Hellboy; Abe Sapien; Sammael; Ogdru Jahad The Corpse and Behemoth.
Bellame Hospital:Contains all the promotional material of the film. Including trailers, DVD spots, movie posters, and easter eggs.
Previews of coming attractions (Spider-Man 2 and Resident Evil: Apocalypse) and weblink for Hellboy promotional merchandise.
Hellboy (2004)
