10 Offbeat Superhero Films You MUST See
8. Hellboy
"I brought beer."
Schoolyard hijinks and comic book violence are what Hellboy is all about. Big Red is visually and tonally different to everything out there and different is Hellboy's bread and butter. With Rasputin summoning Gods of chaos to earth with his Nazi henchmen, Guillermo Del Toro took a superhero that perhaps should not have worked and made it work in the most witty and charming way possible.
Ron Perlman is perfect and plays the mix of adolescence and battle hardened experience very well. This is an incredibly busy film and Perlman's performance ties all of the errant elements together at the right times. Spying on girls at one moment and shouldering the burden of the Apocalypse the next is not an easy gig for an actor covered in prosthetics and body paint but Ron does an excellent job of hiding the seams.
This is a fun film with snarky humour and while it takes the material seriously it pokes fun at the shortcomings of its characters enough that we accept them as believable, flawed people. Well, not 'people', but...
Its a rare treat for a superhero film to let us into the inner sanctum of the titular hero during his downtime. We get a great picture of Hellboy's eating and viewing habits, as well as really feeling that cigars and weights versus cartoons, kittens, and love letters conflict.
Heroes can be boring when they don't have a job to do. Not Hellboy.