Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Whizz-bangy fun, really. Apparently, ages ago, the massed races of fantasy folk
fought a war against humanity. They won, having employed an unstoppable
ultimate weapon, but so appalled was their king at the carnage he had wrought,
a peace was made, and the two groups took to ignoring each other, such that the
whole business faded into legend. Only now the Prince of the Elves has finally
lost his patience and is attempting to gain control of said ultimate weapon, in
order to wipe out humanity again, and set everything to rights. He's got
himself a legitimate beef in my view.

In the other corner is the BRPD and their gang of freaks and weirdos, led by
Hellboy, who aims to punch him until he stops. Fair enough. Game on.

It's very much a SFX/Creatures movie, and the action sequences are king.
There's some bits and bobs of character floating about, but really, what we
want is rampaging elementals flattening New York, and being shot to death with
absurdly large guns. And that's what we get. And it's very nice.

The thing I find somewhat surprising is that a) Mike Mignola, Hellboy's creator
is heavily involved in it and b) that the film is way less talky and thinky
than the comic. Sure, in the comic, Hellboy does fall down a lot, and his
indestructability is used for the same kind of comic effect, but he's also
quite the occult investigator, whereas in the film, he's more like The Thing
out of the Fantastic Four - short on smarts, but long on "It's Clobberin'
Time!"

Anyroad, it's a good little grotesque action movie, lots of fun, but not a
whole lot to take home and think about later.