It’s time for another reboot, and it is WELL documented how I feel about these kinds of films. There ARE some shining examples like “The Dark Knight,” but for each of those there are also “Red Dawn,” “Poltergeist,” and “Footloose”. Now, “Hellboy” adds itself to that list to be a part of the 2019 Summer Movie Season.
Neil Marshall (Constantine) directs this time around with David Harbour (Stranger Things) plays the title character, supported by Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Daniel Dae Kim (Hawaii Five-O), Sasha Lane (American Honey), and Brian Gleeson (Logan Lucky). Hellboy is more of an unrefined type of superhero who works for a secret government agency called the BPRD. Since his arrival on Earth, he was raised by Professor Broom (McShane), and they go on a quest to try to prevent the resurrection of Niume (Jovovich) after she was killed by King Arthur to prevent the end of the world. Racing against a hog fairy named Graugach (Stephen Graham), Hellboy teams up with a girl from his past in Alice (Lane) and BPRD soldier Be Daimio (Kim) to try and stop all of it from happening.
Most of this film takes place in England, and the cinematography compliments its sets very well. As expected, there is a lot of CGI here, which I thought was done nicely and not overdone. The leads do what are expected, but my shout-out goes to Lane, who fits her character nicely. Harbour for me tried too much to replicate what Ron Perlman did in the previous two films and just fell short. He reminded me more of a red version of The Undertaker than the character, and it just didn’t work.
This was a bit longer of a two hours than I wanted it to be and could have been about fifteen minutes shorter. The storyline did not land well and its mix of real world and supernatural elements did not fit together as well as they did before. This is also VERY graphic in its more violent scenes to the point where it felt like they did some of the more gory scenes just because they could. This may not be as bad as the “Red Dawn” remake, but it is far from the top of my list, so catch this when it hits cable.