The original Hellboy was an excellent comic-book origin story revealing how a little devil-boy was brought into our world through an inter- dimentional portal during WWII and grew up to be a giant red TV watching, cat-loving anti-supernatural FBI agent.Hellboy 2: The Golden Army successfully builds on that origin and fleshes out the characters of Hellboy and his friends from the BPRD. The sequel embraces the realm of fantasy as opposed to the heavy Sci-Fi content of the original. This is indeed a welcome change as writer/director Guillermo del Toro appears to be better dealing with this genre. However, he keeps the focus on the characters rather than the setting.
The action level in this movie is far superior to the original there are quite literally countless enemies that Hellboy has to fight along with an ogre called Mr. Wink and of course the evil Elvish Prince Nuada [Played by Luke Goss and who bears an almost copyright infringing resemblance to a certain Drizzt Do'Urden from R.A. Salvatore's D&D Forgotten Realms series] who is expertly skilled in martial arts and edged weapons and a stunning sequence involving the Golden Army itself in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland of all places!The film is generally excellent on a technical level. The special effects wizardry is top-notch and it doesn't seem any expense was spared. Danny Elfman delivers his usually brilliant scoring talents composing splendid music. The cast proves you don't need big-name A-listers to carry a movie. A special mention must go to Seth McFarlane who voices Dr. Krauss (basically he does the voice of Klaus the goldfish from American Dad) easily the funniest character, with the most hilarious moments of the film.
While the comedy is an essential part of the formula for this type of movie, the relationship between Hellboy and Liz is sadly once again a little too focused on. While it longer centers on Hellboy's angst, it now dwells to much on Liz's anxiousness about revealing her newly discovered pregnancy to an obviously immature Hellboy. del Toro would have been better off either dealing instead with Hellboy's new relationship with the humans or if he had to focus on a romance: allow the bulk of it to deal with the superior storyline of Abe Sapien and the Elvish Princess Nuala.Final Verdict: A worthy sequel and one that will satisfy the fanboys and those that elevated the cult following of the original if sadly it didn't excite the box office.
Colonel Creedon Rating: ****
This movie was awesome..it was too cool...I did got a deep discount dvd copy of this..and planning to get the blu ray also..hope that there will be another hellboy 3..this is a fantastic film..
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