Hellboy - A Damp Squib
Exams coming up, cramming stuff and desperately needing a break... me and three friends headed to INOX to catch the morning show of Hellboy...
I had read a lot of good things about the movie ... good reviews in the papers et all ... but sadly, either the movie was over hyped or my expectations are on the rise ... Below are my musings on the movie...
The plot is all about Hellboy ... a character based on the Hellboy Comic book series...
The movie starts of in Germany; in the heart of the Nazi experiments with the paranormal ... The starting 15 to 20 minutes of the movie are very gripping and delve a bit into the Nazi Paranormal Camps where science meets demons - a la Return to Castle Wolfenstein Style...
There we are introduced to Rasputin ... the main bad guy of the movie.
Actually, Rasputin, in reality was a Russian Priest who manages to get himself into the Russian courts after impressing the Tsar and Tsarina and eventually, they both start trusting him so much, that they start consulting him on all the palatial matters.
Now, Rasputin was no good guy, wine and women were all he could think off. He was even behind the Tsarina. So, eventually, a group of courtiers, decide to kill him.
The story goes that they poisoned his wine, speared him, (shot him?) and then threw him in the river and when his body was found, he had died of drowning...??
Anyways, back to the story, the Nazis try to open a portal to a demon dimension and this gets foiled and Rasputin gets killed. And then this American scientist finds hellboy (Ron Perlman) (who is a small baby) and gets him to the US where he helps his dad in the paranormal research field which is actually funded by the US Govt.
Later in the movie, we are also introduced to Hellboy’s Love interest - Firestarter (Selma Blair) ... who basically has about no part at all in the movie ...
There are quite a bit of action sequences and all the locations in the movie have a gothic feel to them which looks very nice.
In the graphics department, the movie does pretty okay and the monsters are very well done and you do feel disgusted (to a small extent) during the egg laying scenes and stuff.
I did not notice anything extraordinary in the music score which is mediocre at best.
The place where the movie fails miserably is the editing which is very poorly done.
The movie does not seem continuous and is quite a jerky experience.
Also, there are many loose ends, which are easily noticeable...
The movie does not let you get to know the characters well, as like in XMEN or Spiderman, where you atleast emphathize with the main characters, here you feel nothing !
Nothing to write home about the acting department either.
The movie has everything thrown in ... action sequences, love story, an adventure, demons, paranormal, the end of the world ... a jack of all master of none kinda thing.
In addition, the movie tries to be funny at times, which is devastating. The only movie which managed to pull the action and funny part off according to me, was MIB and that was long ago.
You cannot but notice many similarities to the XMEN movies and believe me, the XMEN movies did a far better job at it than this movie.
On a whole, this movie is not satisfying and feels like a waste of time and money when you step out of the theatres...
Go for it only if you have nothing better to do or you have seen all the other movies running.