“Hellboy” (2004)
So just a couple of years after del Toro had been entrusted with a sequel in “Blade II” (rather underrated at the time, by critics if not by filmgoers: the film had the best box office of the trilogy), he was given the keys to his very own franchise. And if his career had been a little bit “one for them and one for me” to this point, perhaps “Hellboy” is the first real evidence that del Toro was going to be able to synthesize both impulses and, when the material allowed him, to deliver straight-up entertainment and decent action, spiced up and colored in with his eye for the loopy and the off-kilter. And that’s exactly what “Hellboy” is, in addition to providing a shamefully enjoyable and long-overdue leading role for Ron Perlman (seriously, there simply has never existed an actor better suited to this role, and there never will). In fact, Perlman’s cigar-chomping, world-weary benign demon is really the perfect fit for del Toro too, the ultimate sympathetic monster with a mile-wide romantic streak and a snarky sense of humor to boot. Which is not to say “Hellboy” is flawless by any means. Outside of Perlman, some of the performances are shaky (earlier on in his career, del Toro’s sympathy for his various devils comes at the expense of the characterization of the humans), and too often it feels like ever-bigger-and-more-versions of the same grey slithery, tentacled CGI critters are used where real stakes ought to be. Still the Boys Own-style fun, right down to the ludicrous Rasputin/Nazi axis of villainy, and the surprisingly touching emotional core, which details the tentatve romance between Hellboy and fellow freak Liz (a superbly cast Selma Blair), lifts “Hellboy” well clear of a lot of its more anonymous comic-book movie competition and still remains a benchmark in what can be achieved when a director really genuinely feels for the source material, as opposed to just playing lip service to it to get the gig. [B]
“Blade II” (2002)
Seen by many as del Toro’s “test movie” before he could get the greenlight to finally make his passion project— an adaptation of Mike Mignola‘s “Hellboy” comic book series— “Blade II” is one of the filmmaker’s more underrated accomplishments, a violent, stylish, vampire romp in which virtually every character is an unapologetically fiendish blood-sucker, something that makes the movie all the cooler. Del Toro said that he wanted the sequel to Stephen Norrington’s sleeper hit “Blade,” to be scarier, and he set about accomplishing that by introducing characters that are even more vile than the half-vampire/half-human Blade (Wesley Snipes) and the various vampiric baddies introduced the first time around. Enter: The Reapers. Led by Luke Goss (who del Toro would utilize again for “Hellboy II: The Golden Army“), the Reapers were an amalgam of del Toro fetishes: they have a mouth that opens in a provocatively sexual manner that also gives way to an insect-like maw (both specialities of the director). And “Blade II” is just a blast, bolstered by strong design work (some by Mignola himself— his storyboards are framable), energetically staged action sequences (although sometimes del Toro falters on the hand-to-hand combat stuff) and a greater emphasis on the mythology of the vampire world. Del Toro is responsible for a number of fine, gore-soaked flourishes— the way the vampires turn to dust like the remains of a flicked cigarette, the Dracula-worthy lining of Blade’s black leather duster, and, most notably the creation of The Blood Pack, a “Dirty Dozen“-style band of vampires who were trained to kill Blade but are now forced to work with him to find the Reapers. Led by Ron Perlman, as the vaguely Nazi-ish Reinhardt, the additional characters create a nice level of friction and even allow for— gasp!— humor in a Blade movie. Wesley Snipes even smiles a couple of times. Maybe that’s del Toro’s most miraculous achievement. “Blade II” doesn’t try to replicate the feeling of the first one, instead giving into its own bizarre mood and worldview. [B]
