UK Release Date: 08-12-2008
Price: £22.99
UK Certificate: 12A
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Country: US/Germany
Distributor: Universal Home Entertainment

With Hellboy, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro delivered a comic book adaptation disting­uished by his customary imagin­ative flair. In this second outing for the misunderstood stump-horned hero, he ups the fireworks while retaining the first film’s fantastic­ality, humour and charismatic characterisation.

Forteans might miss the Nazis-messing-with-the occult elements, and this is, comparatively, a more formulaic superheroes tale, featuring a band of misfits with special powers and love interests saving the world. Yet while there is less emphasis on the characters’ backstory, Hellboy and aquatic empath Abe (pyrokinetic Liz Sherman, played by Selma Blair, is less interesting) are still idiosyncratic and endearing, and the team is now under the command of an officious ectoplasmic German medium in a diving suit. With the action and spectacle ramped up, Hellboy II remains both fun and funny (check out the boys’ drunken rendition of Barry Manilow’s ‘Can’t Smile Without You’).

Del Toro is known for his creative take on the supernatural, and the film boasts some great monsters – evil Tooth Fairies, an Elemental Forest God, a robotic Golden Army. The Star Trek-like notion that the sentient inhabitants of these other worlds are as ‘human’ as humans adds to the film’s laid-back amiability. The obvious reference here, though, is to Tolkien – del Toro’s vision seems well-suited to Middle-earth, which bodes well for his next directing project, The Hobbit.

While opinion will doubtless be divided over the respective merits of this blockbusterish entry and the lower key, more involving first film – or, indeed, those of the unpretentious Hellboys and the acclaimed Pan’s Labyrinth – there can be little argument but that del Toro makes cinema a more magical place.