Hellboy II

No spoilers here, don't worry. I want you to enjoy this as much as I did.

I have a soft spot for superhero/comic book based movies, but Hellboy II is an exceptional specimen. Maybe the smartest, funniest and most beautiful example of the genre I've ever seen.

And rare as it is, it's a sequel that outshines the first movie.



I think the charm is in the complexity of the antagonisms. Here's a demon brought from Hell (or thereabouts) by Nazis. But remember in the first movie, he would hide his cigar behind his back when his adoptive father came into the room. A devil with a heart of gold. A charming misfit: Hellboy files down his horns because he thinks he'll somehow fit in with humanity. He loves candy, TV, Cuban cigars and his girlfriend isn't just hot, she's actually prone to bursting in to flames.

But the kicker to all this is to put him up against foes you don't really want him to kill. Villains who are breathtakingly beautiful, some of whom aren't even truly 'bad,' just powerful and dangerous and impossible to negotiate with.

I don't want to include any spoilers, as I say, so I'll leave it at that.



The movie's not quite perfect. I guess every film has to have a fatal flaw, and in this case it's from a terrible choice in product placement. Tecate Light gets heavy play in the interlude before the third act (I guess it was the third act), and I just cannot accept Hellboy drinking light beer. Give him some Sierra Nevada Bigfoot to go with that stinky cigar, a crazy Belgian ale, a Bully! Porter. At the very least let the product placement go to Guinness.

Tecate Light? For crying out loud.