Film Review - Hellboy (15)

I'm demon-spawn AND a Nazi. Great.

I have a huge fondness for Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy films - 2004 and 2008 respectively. They have an infectious sense of comic-book fun, fused with the director's trademark visual aesthetics and his creature-feature love. And let's not forget an endearing central performance from Ron Perlman, a man born to wear those filed-down devil's horns. When I heard that a new version was on the way, it caused me concern - mainly that this fresh incarnation might displace the original in people's affections, maybe even my own. Turns out I really needn't have worried. Oh hell no.

Director Neil Marshall's new movie is the long-delayed result of a Part 3 in the original Hellboy franchise that never got off the ground - though it takes the form of a complete reboot. Character actor David Harbour plays the eponymous half-human/half-demon, who rounds up and dispenses with evil supernatural entities as a member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD). Rescued as a fork-tailed red child from the Nazis by monster-hunter Professor Broom (Ian McShane), he is plagued by identity issues, no matter how often he chisels away at his horny protuberances. It's an issue only exacerbated once ancient sorceress Nimue aka The Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich) makes a grand comeback, having been brutally dispatched by King Arthur back in the day. She's plotting a revenge grand enough to precipitate the Apocalypse, while present our snarling hero with an offer he might find tough to refuse. 

If all of the above sounds preposterous, well Hellboy is precisely that, right back to the original Mike Mignola comic-books - and in the right hands (Del Toro's just for example) it proves an advantage. Here, however, there's too much relentless noise and confusion from the start for any of the diabolical monster-madness to work. The screenplay is all over the shop - full of heavy-handed flashbacks to explain the backstory of protagonist, associates and villains all alike. Meanwhile in the present we're expected to care about who Hellboy's tracking down and his reasons for doing so; shorn of context along with horns, and with no help from a charmless script, that's simply not happening.

Tonal inconsistency serves to compound these problems. In an effort to distinguish itself from the Del Toro version, the movie revels in its R-rating  - shlocky gore ladled over the crassly comic, expletive-heavy screenplay - while still attempting to be sentimental at points on the basis of its half-assed character development. Director Marshall has some good notches in his belt (Dog Soldiers, The Descent and two battle-centric Games of Thrones episodes are all to his credit), but here he presides over a muddled and joyless CGI-swamped mess that never threatens to cohere, as one noisy set-piece crashes into another.

Needless to say the cast struggle to find any kind of footing as the plot lurches around, spilling its great buckets of exposition along with the blood. Harbour might be an okay Hellboy were he given anything of substance to work with, likewise Sasha Lane and Daniel Dae Kim as sidekicks bolted on too awkwardly to form an organic-feeling team. Even McShane's customary charm can't spark any enjoyment, while Sophie Okonedo (so delightful in the recent Wild Rose) is landed with surely the most thankless role of her career - Woman Who Shows Up To Explain Stuff Before Dying. Oh, and don't get me started on Stephen Graham's motion-capture turn as a Scouse-accented pig fairy. The Line of Duty star is one of the UK's finest, but even he can't do anything to remedy this additional comedy misfire.

With its studio budget the film demonstrates flickers of what might have been - creature and set designs that genuinely impress, neatly choreographed fight sequences, themes of identity and divided loyalty on which a better script could have properly capitalised. All potential is blown early and repeatedly, however, so that the promise mid- and post-credits of a follow-up rings particularly hollow. With this new comic-book universe so poorly established, surely no one will be begging for a sequel. Not when you can go back and watch the old Del Toro gang all over again. Come to think of it, that's an excellent idea. My Hellboy faith needs some serious restoring.

Gut Reaction: One protracted bout of yawning, regular physical discomfort and moments of advanced exasperation. I mean this was a serious chore from start to finish.

Memorable Moment: There was a bit with a big walking house. That was quite cool.

Ed's Verdict: 3/10. Not a disaster in technical terms, but mismanaged on every other level. Loud, relentless and deeply dull.

Film Review - Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (12A)

You're too good, Newt. You never met a monster you couldn't love.

I'm going to cut right to the chase here. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a big, beautiful... mess. There is much to enjoy in J K Rowling's second foray into the 1920s Wizarding World, so many individual moments to love. However there's simply no bypassing the film's basic flaws. 2016's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them told a story with a coherent narrative that tied its up threads in satisfying fashion, while teasing out a few tantalising strands for the sequel. This new movie is a whole different beast - undeniably fantastic, but equally frustrating.

The central problem is the plotting, of which there is so, so much.

The story picks up in 1927 a year on from the previous film, with the dark wizard Gellart Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) breaking out from enchanted custody and resuming his search for the powerfully magic young Credence (Ezra Miller), who he wants to groom for his own nefarious purposes. Reticent hero Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) discovers that the British Ministry of Magic wants to hunt down Credence too - and destroy him. Then Newt is sent on a mission of his own by none other than a young(er) Albus Dumbledore, to save the young man's life. 

That little lot we could deal with along with the saga's romantic complications, but several additional plot lines are woven in, resulting in a narrative too splintered to cohere properly. Only in the film's latter stages does it all come together (and that's by way of several hefty exposition dumps). The result is that you're unable to focus properly on any one thread. It's not helped by a narrative choppiness - possibly due to editors hacking Rowling's labyrinthine narrative into a manageable running time - so that certain popular characters' story arcs get disappointingly short-changed.  

It's a massive shame, because this movie is crammed with delights deserving of a tighter showcase. David Yates and his team share a decade of experience on these movies, so the world-building is staggeringly good ('20s London and Paris both look magnificent and the return to Hogwarts is triumphant). James Newton Howard's score will make souls soar. The beasts themselves are creations of wonder and the humans are even better. 

Chief among these is Redmayne, who inhabits the awkward and endearing Newt completely - a wholly unexpected and refreshing kind of leading man. But Jude Law is also a terrific Dumbledore, Dan Folger heartbreakingly sincere as Newt's muggle-pal Jacob, Zoe Kravitz poignant as his old schoolfriend Leta Lestrange... And Depp exudes slurry menace as the elegantly wasted antagonist. Everyone is on point here, they just need more room to breathe and expand, particularly the smashing Goldstein sisters.

As ever there's no shortage of ingenuity in Rowling's screenplay; she clearly loves developing her own creation (even if the story appears to chuck a few bombs into her own literary canon). There are great ideas about insidious politics and how good people can be duped by evil, along with the clever integration of fantasy with actual 20th century events. But oh it needs proper space and clarity.   

The film's ending sweeps away much of the clutter, so that Fantastic Beasts 3 will have a chance to shape itself into something more focused. But for this episode the problems are already built in. If you're a Potter-head - and it seems I am - then you'll probably have a fun and absorbing experience in spite of the deficiencies. For Wizarding World agnostics, however, The Crimes of Grindelwald will prove the wrong kind of overwhelming. 

Gut Reaction: Real enjoyment with moments of wonder, humour and emotion. But a sadness feeling too as it all failed to gel.

Where Are the Women?: J K is a genius, but her sheer ambition got the better of her this time around. And some of her fascinating female characters (along with the male!) suffered as consequence.

Ed's Verdict: 6.5/10. Fantastic Beasts 2 is a constant source of delights and at points has a genuine awe-factor. I just wish it had come together into a satisfyingly unified story.