In case you don’t get to see The Dark Knight

Well, I’m sure a lot of people know that it’s pretty hard to get tickets to the fastest selling movie in one day, ever: The Dark Knight.  It recently surpassed even Spider Man 3 for the best selling movie on openning day (and almost certainly will beat it for best openning weekend ever).  But, just in case you don’t get to see The Dark Knight, there’s an equally compelling and entertaining movie out there to see: Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. You should definitely go give this movie a look see…

Hellboy 2 is definitely one of the summer’s best films.  It goes on the short list of this year’s best films, which are somehow almost all superhero flicks.  It’s certainly in league with The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and WALL-E for the best we’ve had to see.  Why so?  Hellboy 2 is a funny and, oftentimes, dark fantasy film with an allegorical twist aimed at inciting the need for environmental protection.  It’s at times a little too overt, and perhaps thinks it’s more important than it really is, but is nevertheless an outstanding film worthy of any film-goers viewing.

As I currently write this, I am yet to see the first Hellboy.  I hear the film is great and was another done by the brilliant visionary, Guillermo del Torro, who is most famous for Pan’s Labyrinth. One can easily see the influence of this work on the new Hellboy.  In short, think The Hulk meets The Lord of the Rings.  The movie is equally fantasy as it is science fiction as it is superhero film.  And, it’s all bad ass.

The short version of the plot goes as follows: some prince of a dead race of creatures that live deep beneath the earth are pissed because the humans manipulated a contract they had with these creature-people.  And, of course, in order to get payback and get back on top of the game, the prince dude is going to get this “Golden Army” thing to come kick the crap out of humanity.  Fortunately, we have Hellboy.

The film gets complicated by the fact that Hellboy wants some fame for his hard work defending humans.  At the same time, however, people are afraid of him and ostracize him.  He even does some questionable things to defend humankind.  Ultimatley, Hellboy 2 develops into a visual masterpiece out to pull at the heartstrings while also getting the mind going, and yet, still, it gets the adrenaline pumping.

Sure, the movie may be a little more than people were going to the movies to see.  At the conclusion, there are some loose ends that I would have hoped del Torro would’ve donated more film time to and tried to clean up a bit better.  Even so, it remains among the best movies of this summer and definitely worth seeing.

For being funny, charming, intelligent, and a visual materpiece, I rate Hellboy 2: The Golden Army a 4/5.  Go take a look!