Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Rating: **
Even if you are not a die-hard comics fan, chances are you'll enjoy Hellboy. Based on the Mike Mignola creation, the film may not be thrill-a-minute entertainment like Superman, Spiderman or Batman. But this is precisely what makes it tick. On the face of it, Hellboy makes for a perfect recipe for some mind-blowing SFX and is also quite liberally endowed with stunts and action. But it's the well-etched persona of the hero (an endearing Perlman) that gives the movie its special appeal.
Starting out with World War II, it has a Nazi occultist Rasputin creating Hellboy in a bid to hasten the end of the world. However, the Allied forces are able to rescue him in the nick of time and he is then raised in the US by the benign scholar Prof Broom. Hellboy joins the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence where he is ably assisted by aqua man Abe Sapien and the fresh-faced FBI agent John...
