Prime Time: Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024)

A new Hellboy movie that has both a new actor portraying Big Red (Jack Kesy takes on the role this time) and a new director at the helm (Brian Taylor, he of the fun Neveldine/Taylor film-making duo), I was prepared to seriously dislike this. I have enjoyed previous Hellboy movies, but they had directors and stars I was more interested in. This seemed to be destined to disappoint me, considering the lack of major names and what looked to be, from the trailer anyway, a restrictively low budget.

I ended up not being disappointed.

To boil the story down to the core of the premise, Hellboy and Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) end up in a remote area where they discover someone in need of their help. Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White) has been put in a very difficult position, which makes him a target for a witch (Leah McNamara), and also has him apparently owing a debt to the titular crooked man (Martin Bassindale). 

With Mike Mignola helping to adapt his own comic book, joined by Taylor and Christopher Golden, this is a decent little slice of supernatural action that, as I have been assured by fans of the Hellboy comics, actually feels more in line with the source material than previous live-action films. I still have a soft spot for Perlman in the role, and the fact that his Hellboy was surrounded by the gorgeousness of Guillermo del Toro world-building, but there's actually nothing here to be overly critical of.

Yes, this cast and crew seem to be working with more limited resources, but that doesn't stop them from presenting a nicely-constructed number of set-pieces that allow Hellboy to face off against supernatural beings with his usual mix of brute strength and an inability to be too fazed by anything. The opening sequence, involving a speeding train and a troublingly large spider, may not inspire the most confidence, but things improve once we then move to the start of the main storyline.

Kesy is alright in the main role, and perhaps his performance only seems slightly lacking due to my own bias. He certainly does well with what he's given, and the character has the right weight and attitude for almost every minute of his screentime. Rudolph often feels like she's just around to be placed in danger, but the same could be said of others who have shared the screen with Big Red in past adventures. White is enjoyably shaky, even as he tries to stop showing how worried and tortured he is, and both McNamara and Bassindale are a lot of fun as two of the main entities causing trouble for our leads. Hannah Margetson and Joseph Marcell also do well, playing two people caught up in the unfolding events in different ways that could lead to them sharing a very similar fate.

I started to happily recommend this to like-minded friends as soon as I'd seen it. That doesn't mean that I think it's great, but I definitely think it is better than many (including myself) would expect it to be. I keep describing it as being akin to a one-shot comic, which makes sense when you consider the source material, and I suspect that fans of the main character will end up as pleasantly surprised as I was.

7/10

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Hellboy (2019)

Hellboy is the weakest film yet from director Neil Marshall, who has been away from cinema screens for far too long (his last solo project was Centurion, almost a decade ago). But a weak film from Neil Marshall is still something that I'll happily watch ahead of films from many other directors. Because Marshall has consistently provided me with entertainment, thrills, and some of the best moments in modern genre cinema. So, despite the critical and commercial failure of this movie, I was always going to give him my time.

David Harbour is the actor now taking on the main role, and Ian McShane is his father figure, but this will all feel very familiar to fans of the property. All you need to know is that an evil sorceress, a "blood queen" named Vivienne Nimue (Milla Jovovich) is trying to come back and get her revenge, despite having been dismembered and her body parts placed in different locations, and part of her plan involves Hellboy taking charge of Excalibur and unleashing a kind of hell on Earth. Hellboy is helped in this adventure by a young woman who can communicate with the dead (Alice, played by Sasha Lane) and a skilled soldier type (Ben Daimio, played by Daniel Dae Kim).

I could spend just as much time writing about all of the little mis-steps that stop this from being a great movie, but I am choosing instead to try and heap a little praise upon it. Enough people have told you why you should give it a miss. I am going to try and convince you to give it two hours of your time.

First of all, forget the previous Hellboy movies. They are fantastic, and few people have the same attention to detail when it comes to creating cinematic worlds as Guillermo del Toro. So it's important to remember that as you go into this. It's not a Del Toro film, and it's not trying to be. I think too many people gave this a viewing while still holding on to their love (and well-earned love, at that) for those other movies.

Second, this is a good cast. Harbour does well in the main role, and McShane has become a master of stealing scenes while appearing in smaller roles in recent years. Jovovich has a blast as the big baddie, and is especially fun in the roles that have her still waiting for her body to be fully assembled. It's a shame that Lane and Kim aren't as much fun as they could be, let down by a script that doesn't seem to know what to do with them for large sections of the runtime, but that's compensated for by the performances from Sophie Okonedo, Thomas Haden Church (in a brief cameo), and Stephen Graham, voicing a "henchman" creature named Gruagach.

Although the script by Andrew Cosby may not be as strong or interesting as it could be, everything moves along energetically enough, with some fun set-pieces interspersed throughout that allow Marshall to deliver some blood and guts around people who roll their eyes and swear at the monsters attempting to push them off their mortal coil.

The special effects are varying in quality, the score from Benjamin Wallfisch is foot-stampingly good, and the whole thing is just a flawed bundle of messy fun. Which is sometimes the best kind of fun (hey, get your mind out of the gutter). Give it a watch and you may agree.

6/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy the movie here.

Prime Time: Hellboy Animated: Blood And Iron (2007)

At this current time, a new Hellboy movie has just been released. And it's taken quite a drubbing, in terms of both the general critcal consensus. I have yet to see it, despite wanting to (David Harbour is an actor I like, Neil Marshall is a director I LOVE), so I figured that I could at least check out one or two other Hellboy tales in the meantime.

This particular adventure, Blood And Iron, features the main cast members from the Guillermo del Toro movies, all lending their voices to their characters in animated form (much like the Sword Of Storms tale, which I have also seen, and the super-short Iron Shoes tale, which I have yet to free up three minutes for). The animation style is fun and it's good to just be able to spend a bit more time with these characters again.

But what's it all about? Basically, the BPRD are despatched to investigate a haunted house. They suspect that it's all just a publicity stunt, considering the new owner of the house is a very rich developer who would seem to relish the attention. But it turns out that there's more to the case, and it involves a vampire previously encountered by Professor Bruttenholm. Moving between the present and the past, viewers get to see Bruttenholm finding out about the vampire many years ago, as well as his time convincing others that a small, red, demonic entity could be worth looking after, instead of being immediately destroyed.

Directed by Victor Cook, and Tad Stones, this is an enjoyable distraction for those simply wanting another Hellboy adventure. It retains the essence of the characters, adds some nice backstory details, and moves briskly from one bloody set-piece to the next. Writer Kevin Hopps doesn't seem to have too hard a time putting the script together, a lot of the backstory feels very much like it could have been lifted from many Hammer horror movies, but perhaps it's unfair to think that just because Hopps has done such good work making it seem so easy.

Perlman is good in the central role, although he seems a bit less petulant and grumpy than he was in the live-action movies, and the mellifluous vocal stylings of John Hurt are as enchanting and soothing as ever (maybe that's just me). Selma Blair and Doug Jones round off the central quartet, doing just fine, and the supporting artists all do solid work, with Kath Soucie and Cree Summer getting to have the most fun as the main villains.

It's far from unmissable, and I wouldn't recommend seeking it out for ridiculously inflated prices, but this is a good piece of work for Hellboy fans, with the animation style fluid and nicely in line with the majority of the standard comic art (from what I can see, although I still need to delve in to some of the printed tales). A fun 75 minutes, nothing more and nothing less.

7/10

You can buy the DVD here.
Americans can buy it here.