Looking Out To Sea

Well, Nick has summed it up already for me, but I’m sure there are some things I can add.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is extremely silly, and I’m sure there was no good reason for anything to happen that did happen — besides getting to the next set piece, that is — but that’s why I went.

I realised on the way home last night, as I was attempting to compose this review in my head (and find an open shop to buy milk) that wildly inconsistent BDQ has a problem in action movies. If you remember in detective stories, the protagonist sometimes gets to know a clue that the reader/viewer doesn’t learn, which prevents them from working it out. It’s a cheap trick that forces the reader to take a back seat and just wait.

And so the conclusion I came to last night was that action films, especially ones with fantastical characters, force the viewer to do the same. There’s no way to tell whether Hellboy can survive a particular attack unscathed. Can he take the big ogre with one bunch of his mighty fist? Sometimes he’s punching guys a hundred yards through the air, and other times he seems so much weaker. It’s unpredictable, which is annoying.

This stuff is more prone to happen with fantastical characters because I don’t think anyone has really thought about the physical limits of these people. How high can they really jump? How fast do they run? And so on. (I suppose you could also mention Superman removing his spectacles to use his x-ray vision!)

All this is pretty irrelevant though. Because I thought this film was absurd and hilarious and very good. It may still have some relevance though — as a movie has less to engage the brain, does the brain engage less? I tend not to notice plot holes in movies like this because it’s all action! bam! kapow! but in more cerebral films they are more noticeable.

Whatever. Go see it, especially if you liked the first film.