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Review: del Toro's "Hellboy"
May. 5th, 2023 03:23 pmDel Toro is such an uneven director. People forget that, I think, in the rush to stan—which is itself a kind of uncomplicated relationship to desire with an artist, uninterested in and even antithetical to a fine perception of or deep engagement with their work (apologies to bandom, but I do think the narrow bandwidth of this relationship lends itself to a hyper focused appreciation of a few aspects of an artist’s work at the cost of a broader appreciation of that artist’s contexts and a nuanced valuation of their creative and presentational choices). It may be that del Toro’s successes are a precipitate of his failures. Perhaps he takes risks which sometimes pay off and sometimes do not. Perhaps he learns from his Ls. “Hellboy” is an interesting movie, but it also sucks, and the way things suck can itself be interesting.
Shooting events supposed to take place in America in Bristol and Bulgaria gives the production an odd, lurching visual quality. A UK council estate is not an American apartment building: it’s fairly architecturally distinct, so much so that I went and looked up the shooting location because I was almost certain of what I was looking at. Small details are similarly weird. Hellboy breaks into the mental health facility a work colleague has checked herself into with a case of Bud Light, then proceeds to act as though this is sharable gift rather than a cutting insult to someone already in crisis, really going through it. No one familiar with American beer could make such an error. Not even Budweiser: Bud Light.
This, naturally, is not the film’s key issue. I’d say that lies in how “part time” (“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, as mocked by Red Letter Media) everyone’s delivery is. No is shaken or excited by any of the film’s events. Perhaps the direction aimed at a sort of ‘Bruce Willis in “The Fifth Element”’ here-we-go-again quality, but instead it just feels like whole story is taking place in a DMV in Joliet. Everyone in this movie is vaguely tired, even when they’re getting disemboweled by Hitler’s Favourite Robot. I feel tired watching this movie. It’s camp, but camp as in ‘camping with your Uncle Jim, who is extremely divorced’. Not even the existence of a character who can indeed accurately be described as Hitler’s Favourite Robot juices up the atmosphere. It’s especially weird because if you look at the first collection of Hellboy comics, you can see that this pulls out a lot of those narrative strands in a way that does make sense, even delaying the father-figure’s death to add a bit of structure and tension. It’s the characterisation and texture of the piece that suck, more than anything. It doesn’t feel like del Toro has anything he particularly wants to say, here.
The film slumps to a stop, not concluding so much as running out of battery life. The villains’ endgame series of actions make little or no sense in terms of an effort to achieve their stated goals. The finale, featuring some Cthulhu, is totally lacklustre. The actual beast is just, idk, calamari? There’s nothing squamous here. It feels like it needs a contrasting element to keep it from being stodgy, maybe some lemon juice.
After all that, Hellboy smooches the sad girl who catches on fire too much while she’s on fire, and comes out unharmed. (Why? Eh.) Meanwhile, the sad white guy who’s been interested in the sad white girl for all of five minutes looks on in a way that indicates he’s resigning himself to a broken heart because he did not get the girl. But they went on all of one date, so why does he care? Why should I? Why am I still here? “Hellboy”, everybody.
Shooting events supposed to take place in America in Bristol and Bulgaria gives the production an odd, lurching visual quality. A UK council estate is not an American apartment building: it’s fairly architecturally distinct, so much so that I went and looked up the shooting location because I was almost certain of what I was looking at. Small details are similarly weird. Hellboy breaks into the mental health facility a work colleague has checked herself into with a case of Bud Light, then proceeds to act as though this is sharable gift rather than a cutting insult to someone already in crisis, really going through it. No one familiar with American beer could make such an error. Not even Budweiser: Bud Light.
This, naturally, is not the film’s key issue. I’d say that lies in how “part time” (“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, as mocked by Red Letter Media) everyone’s delivery is. No is shaken or excited by any of the film’s events. Perhaps the direction aimed at a sort of ‘Bruce Willis in “The Fifth Element”’ here-we-go-again quality, but instead it just feels like whole story is taking place in a DMV in Joliet. Everyone in this movie is vaguely tired, even when they’re getting disemboweled by Hitler’s Favourite Robot. I feel tired watching this movie. It’s camp, but camp as in ‘camping with your Uncle Jim, who is extremely divorced’. Not even the existence of a character who can indeed accurately be described as Hitler’s Favourite Robot juices up the atmosphere. It’s especially weird because if you look at the first collection of Hellboy comics, you can see that this pulls out a lot of those narrative strands in a way that does make sense, even delaying the father-figure’s death to add a bit of structure and tension. It’s the characterisation and texture of the piece that suck, more than anything. It doesn’t feel like del Toro has anything he particularly wants to say, here.
The film slumps to a stop, not concluding so much as running out of battery life. The villains’ endgame series of actions make little or no sense in terms of an effort to achieve their stated goals. The finale, featuring some Cthulhu, is totally lacklustre. The actual beast is just, idk, calamari? There’s nothing squamous here. It feels like it needs a contrasting element to keep it from being stodgy, maybe some lemon juice.
After all that, Hellboy smooches the sad girl who catches on fire too much while she’s on fire, and comes out unharmed. (Why? Eh.) Meanwhile, the sad white guy who’s been interested in the sad white girl for all of five minutes looks on in a way that indicates he’s resigning himself to a broken heart because he did not get the girl. But they went on all of one date, so why does he care? Why should I? Why am I still here? “Hellboy”, everybody.
