HELLBOY (2004) ** I didn't know that it was based on a comic book, going in, I just knew that it had a really silly plot. Not my kind of comic book, ultra-violent/gross and not all that funny. Yeah, there's a certain droll wit to Ron Perlman's depiction of a devil-baby raised from hell by Nazis, but now turned good. It's just not my thing, comic book violence, though I mean it as a complement when I say that Guillermo del Toro does a great job of capturing the spirit and look of such things. This has got to be someone's idea of a great movie (someone who knows or cares nothing about cinema); marines, bikers, frat boys who wish they were marines or bikers, martial arts students only into it to break things, frustrated Fiat mechanics.not such a bad lot to hang around with for a few beers and poker, but no one you want to get going on the philosophy of life, generally (there are unquestionably exceptions-I've known some very bright and articulate bikers and marines, though I'm less certain that they'd love this picture; and some cool frat boys, though they didn't want to be bikers or marines). So it should be initially surprising (then you realize, inevitable) that they try and mix some philosophy in. I have to admit that they had me going for the first few minutes with that "Hitler became upwardly mobile through his membership in the Thule Society" stuff, but that turned out to be the last of their coherent esoteric thoughts. Whatever, like I say I was surprised so I wasn't really expecting even that much. Less surprising, now that we're thinking on it, is how the big lug always has difficulty hanging on to his girlfriend, consequences including a cinematic but almost equally lithic depiction of Rodin's Thinker with a hangover. I don't know which seem to go on longer, the parts where nothing's happening or the action sequences, but I'd be remiss to suggest that no talent went into the thing.
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