HELLBOY REVIEW: Plays third fiddle to Del Toro’s two classic fantasy films…

David Harbour steps into Ron Perlman’s big shoes in Neil Marshall’s reboot of the supernatural comic-book franchise.

Who, exactly, was clamoring for a Hellboy reboot, Culturedemandsgeeks asks?

After watching Guillermo del Toro deliver one of the most on-target, unparallel comic book adaptations in fanboy history in 2004/2008, starring an actor who might as well have been genetically engineered to play the part, surely every one of Mike Mignola’s one-of-a-kind superhero was content. And when Hellboy the Golden Army came out for seconds, we were all ‘Wow’ and ‘You can’t beat this!’

Surely the only people wanting more are those who control the film rights to the character, who’ve probably been watching Marvel print money for a decade and asking, “Why aren’t we cashing in on this craze?”

And sadly, these people shouldn’t be in control of making or remaking beloved classics.

You will never realize how much you need Guillermo del Toro in your life until you see the reboot of ‘Hellboy.’

But Neil Marshall’s take on the big, red monkey isn’t lousy because nobody wants it, but because it fails to live up to both its big-screen and printed predecessors. It’s just lousy. Bloated, and less funny than it aims to be. We get empty bombast and a million bloody ways to rip a body to pieces, too few of which are inventive. Misguided in key design choices, and acting choices too, even when it scores with less important decisions. But the film does make bold choices that might have paid off under other circumstances (if Ron Pearlman’s insane Hellboy never existed). But these aren’t those circumstances.

Marshall takes over for del Toro, who directed the original 2004 “Hellboy” and its sequel, 2008’s “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” films that were an ideal pairing of director and star with Ron Perlman as the wisecracking, half-demon superhero.

THE PLOT:

Where to begin in explaining the plot?

How about many hundreds of years ago, with King Arthur (yes, that King Arthur with a shoddy narrative overlapping the title sequence) slaying the evil blood queen Nimue (played by the lovely, Milla Jovovich), slicing up her body and placing the pieces in boxes to be hidden across the land. (This is just in the first few minutes, folks.)

Cut to the present day, with Hellboy, as a member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, eventually having to fight off Nimue as she gets put back together and gathers her powers to wreak havoc on humanity.

That is really the explanation of the plot. So much more happens along the way, but there’s no need to clutter your brains with it.

avid Harbour, from “Stranger Things,” takes over the role and does a perfectly fine job with it, muttering bombs-away wisecracks (“I saw Ra once in the underworld. He’s a close talker”) in between blood and guts all-hold-fighting-hulk-ish-CGI creature-feature showdowns. With his mopey long-haired biker look suggests a very different ‘Hellboy’ from Pearlman’s incarnation, temperamentally Harbour comes closer to a wise-cracking comedian than the red rogue, we just want to love.

The movie is lunging to be a badass hard-R epic, but it’s basically a pile of origin-story gobbledygook, which is over-cooked like (the black pudding, cut scene), full of limb-hacking, eye-gouging (literally, how many eyes can you poke out in this movie?) monster battles.

Playing Hellboy, David Harbour has a tough act to follow and does well, but the real tough act to follow is del Toro’s. He staged these likable but flagrantly derivative adventures with a dynamism that made them better than a lot of more “important” comic-book franchises.

The over-the-top action and blood-spattered creature carnage is directed by Neil Marshall, best known for horror and action movies like The Descent and Doomsday — not to mention orchestrating two major Game of Thrones battles. But those are very different beasts.

Del Toro’s films had the great, John Hurt as a kindly father figure; Marshall’s movie has Ian McShane as the swearing and edgy father (nothing wrong with McShane). Del Toro crafted a fairy tale version of the comics; Marshall has created an R-rated rock opera with sprinklings of fantastic vibes applied over blood, blood, and more bloody violence.

 SUPPORTING CAST:

Daniel Dae Kim and Sasha Lane look the part even if their British accents don’t hold up, while poor, Milla Jovovich can’t quite conjure the seething evil of the seductive Queen of Blood and some comical CGI to boot.

SPECIAL MENTION:

Still, special mention goes to Stephen Graham. A whole new category of awards should be invented for his stellar work voicing a foul-mouthed Scouse pig-monster.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

“Hellboy” stops being fun when it stops being funny—when it abruptly shifts gears into a more relentlessly bloody, violent mood. And eventually, the film reaches a point of extreme, overindulgent insanity that it is even hard to watch, even for the most supportive of fanboys. If the film was, a continuation of the franchise, or even placed somewhere before the earlier films took place (say the early 90s, maybe 80s England), then the film would have achieved better ratings from its fans.

And the fans are the most important people to please, not some bigwigs in high buildings looking for a way to milk a well-loved franchise. his 2019 Hellboy is very different from previous versions, but it’s a monstrously enjoyable creature feature nonetheless, but ultimately lacks heart.

Hears hoping for a decent sequel.

3/5 STARS