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Give ‘em Hellboy
Another cult comic gets a Hollywood makeover
by Mike Gibson
As a Hollywood thespian, Ron Perlman often seems curiously misplaced; a muscular hulk of a fellow, paradoxically endowed with great features but an awful face, he’s too homely to be a leading man, has too much presence to be a common character actor, and is too smart to be a full-time goon. Consequently, he’s made a long and largely prosperous career out of playing villains, anti-heroes, and misunderstood troglodytes—hunchbacks, strongmen, Neanderthals, even the title role in network television’s Beauty and the Beast circa 1987.
Now, at age 54, Perlman has finally found a leading-man role seemingly tailored for his singularly rugged charms, in the form of Hellboy, a movie based on Mike Mignola’s cult comic book character of the same name. Hellboy, you see, is a misunderstood troglodyte who also happens to be a superhero, and Perlman’s wry, unforced take on the character is one of the reasons this celluloid adaptation succeeds. And it does succeed; while not a great film, Hellboy is certainly a good one, ready-made for one of those warm and giddy evenings in the middle of Spring when sleepy arthouse subtlety just won’t do.
The movie begins with a flashback to World War II, and a U.S. military mission to infiltrate a far-flung Nazi outpost. At this secret stronghold, Grigori Rasputin (the infamous mad monk, who apparently survived that deplorable poisoning/stabbing/drowning incident that supposedly killed him in the closing days of Czarist Russia) performs an ancient ritual that opens a portal to another, less savory dimension, with the intent of calling forth nameless powers that will guarantee victory for his new Nazi collaborators.
U.S. troops crash the ceremony, blow everything up and riddle their enemies with bullets, but not before Rasputin’s rites open the dimensional gate long enough for Something to cross over.
That Something turns out to be a chocolate-bar-loving devil-baby, with crimson flesh, tiny horns and a prehensile tail. Nicknamed Hellboy by the soldiers who find him amongst the charred ruins, he is adopted by Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm, the civilian occult specialist who has tagged along as an advisor to the U.S. platoon commander.
Sixty years later, we see Hellboy grown into a 6’ 5” powerhouse with a formidable stone hand and a virtually indestructible physique. He works under Bruttenholm (who is now an old man; by virtue of his “otherness,” Hellboy has aged only half as much) as a special agent for a top-secret FBI division created to battle menaces of supranormal origin.
Also part of Bruttenholm’s misfit squad are Abe Sapien, a man-like amphibian with an almost psychic intelligence, and Liz Sherman, a troubled young woman with pyrokinetic abilities—and with whom Hellboy is hopelessly in love. Together, they face the threat of a resurrected Rasputin, whose dark plans, we learn, were only just begun on Hellboy’s “birthday” in 1944.
Most of Hellboy’s flaws are inherited from the source material, including creator Mignola’s scattered mythos, which dubiously binds together Nazis, Rasputin, assorted demonologies, a female firestarter, and a fishman named after a U.S. President into a single narrative thread. Like the comic series, Hellboy the movie is best enjoyed within the slightly addled confines of its own logic, as an only nominally sensible menagerie of characters who take dark thrill-rides through bizarre netherworlds of the imagination.
Perlman plays “H.B.” (as Sherman sometimes calls him) as a lovable, lovelorn galoot, a courageous supersoldier who guts demon-spawn one moment, but resorts to childish pranks to thwart a rival suitor the next. He accepts the mantle of Hellboy dutifully, albeit with occasional rebellions, most of which are somehow related to his affections for Liz. He is at once flawed, funny, and tragic.
Selma Blair is fetching and equally sympathetic as the haunted pyrokinetic Liz Sherman. While her character’s history is only hinted at in desultory flashback sequences, Blair fills in the blanks with her painfully uncertain bearing and weary, big-eyed stare. She and Perlman share the sort of warm, understated chemistry that could only come of such an unlikely pairing.
Hellboy does suffer from typical action-movie maladies. Stock characters and tired subplots sometimes impede its momentum, especially as regards the part of FBI Agent John Myers (Rupert Evans). Tapped as Hellboy’s new overseer by the dying Bruttenholm (played by the always classy John Hurt), newbie Myers is putatively our window into Hellboy’s world. Instead, he’s largely an irritating cliché—the befuddled neophyte who accepts the passed torch and stands as a metaphor for the coming of a new day.
But these sins prove ultimately forgivable, and even Hellboy’s drawn-out ending has enough truly resonant moments (the denouement with Liz, for instance) to make you forget the ones that ring false. When the credits roll, most moviegoers will yearn to see more of Perlman and his unlikely champion, the superhero with the face that even a mother couldn’t love.
April 8, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 15
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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