For those who want to celebrate All Saint's Day in July, Hellboy II: The Golden Army spills over with goblins, trolls and elves like a Halloween horn of plenty. Guillermo del Toro designs this follow-up to his 2004 Hellboy as a war between the magical and fearsome creatures who roamed J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth and C.S. Lewis' Narnia and a handful of agents from the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, including the burly red demon Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and the female human torch Liz Sherman (Selma Blair).
Del Toro stuffs the film with wit and wonderments. Yet, coming out this superhero summer, it plays like a lovingly crafted synthesis of every fantasy saga we've seen in the past decade.
How often can you watch a behemoth rumble up from beneath the asphalt and shred a street in a big city (in this case, again, New York)? It's bizarre to think such a sight could be a bit ho-hum. But it is, even if del Toro's antagonist turns out to be a towering, gorgeous forest god. In much of Hellboy II, a quiet denouement - such as an urban battlefield transformed into a poignant, beautiful garden - proves more arresting than the gargantuan conflict that precedes it.
Del Toro has been developing this sequel for five years. In the meantime, other filmmakers have created so many subterranean kingdoms and otherworldly alleyways and spectral armies that he's lost the quality of surprise. Luckily, he's some kind of visual genius. He arrests your eyes even when your mind wanders.
Like Kung Fu Panda (but in an alternately jocular and jugular vein), the movie's high point comes at the beginning. On a New Mexico military base in 1955 (you expect a crossover appearance from Indiana Jones), Hellboy's protector and mentor, Professor Broom (John Hurt), tells a bedtime story to the wide-eyed, scrappy little Hellboy (Montse Ribe), who still sports a full horn and a half on his head. (The adult Hellboy shaves them down.)
Broom reads to Hellboy from an antique leather-bound book about the ancient battles between humans bent on conquering the world (they have a hole in their heart filled with greed) and the magic forces led by the King of Elfland, Balor (Roy Dotrice). The tide turns when a goblin blacksmith creates a mechanical army "70 times 70 strong" that will follow Balor as long as he wears a goblin-designed crown (and as long as no one in his court challenges his authority). The "Golden Army" proves so horrific that Balor grounds it. He declares a truce that saves the forests for his kind and the cities for mankind, and breaks the crown into three pieces, handing one part to the humans.
