Hellboy *** (2019, David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Daniel Dae Kim) – Movie Review

Director Neil Marshall’s 2019 Hellboy is trashy but lusty, with plenty of guts and gore. Caught between supernatural and human worlds, the part-demon Hellboy re-connects with his human dad Professor Broom (and Ian McShane) and battles ancient sorceress Nimue, the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich), bent on revenge for some bad stuff back in King Arthur’s time.

For better or worse, OK then for worse, the film is a reboot and not a third installment of Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy series and Ron Perlman does not reprise his role as Hellboy, taken over by Stranger Things actor David Harbour. Marshall and Harbour take all the warmth, subtlety and heart out of it, and substitute basic horror, strong bloody violence, a lot of swearing, a harsh tone and lots of creature battles. It is no longer a dark fairy tale as in Del Toro’s time, but now a full-on comic book horror movie for grown-ups.

The screenplay by Andrew Cosby, based on the Dark Horse comic book Hellboy created by Mike Mignola, is ambitious and busy but incoherent and careless, moving jerkily from one battle to another, as if seamless wasn’t a word in the English language. The Excalibur/ Merlin stuff seems so tired, lazy and generic that at any second Sherlock Holmes could put in an appearance. The script is quite bonkers, but then it’s a comic book movie so that is OK. Do you need an actual plot in a comic book movie? Andrew Cosby obviously doesn’t think so. The game plan is just to loosely link the CGI battles and no one will notice there is no story.

The film has several things in its favour. The CGI, cinematography (Lorenzo Senatore), production design (Paul Kirby) and score (Benjamin Wallfisch) are all very good. The film looks and sounds thrilling. It looks as impressive on its $50 million budget as Dumbo does on its $170 million budget. Harbour’s Hellboy is commendably dark, nasty and scary, Marshall’s direction is flashy and quick moving, so that keeps the movie dynamic, even at times exciting.

However, the acting varies from weak to poor, though that is not just the actors’ fault as the dialogue is junky. Milla Jovovich does not hit the right tone or authority as Nimue, and Sophie Okonedo is wasted as Lady Hatton. They are basically both miscast. Stephen Graham gives a rotten vocal performance as the voice of the sweary northern English pig monster Gruagach, Nimue’s sidekick. Sasha Lane is boring and one note as Alice Monaghan and South Korea actor Daniel Dae Kim lacks authority as Major Ben Daimio. As the latter two are Hellboy’s main sidekicks and have a lot of screen time, this is a big problem for the movie. But McShane has quite a good time hamming away as dad. Probably, a comic book movie is no place for acting or actors anyway. By and large, they just have to look right.

Hellboy at least has the courage of its weird convictions, grabs the attention and keeps hold of it, and ends up as an entertaining guilty pleasure.

Nimue featured in the Hellboy comic The Wild Hunt #2.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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