The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Even longtime comic book/graphic novel devotees might admit to some fatigue with the apparent overkill of Hollywood translations at the multiplex, but the prodigious visual imagination, droll humor and sincere themes entertainingly weaved together by Guillermo Del Toro in Hellboy II: The Golden Army distinguish it among its peers.

Hellboy seems an unpredictable choice for big budget Hollywood treatment amid lurching efforts to get higher profile and much longer established comic book characters to screen faithfully. Artist/writer Mike Mignola introduced the character (a noirish, blue collar paranormal investigator from hell) in 1994 during a flurry of creator owned character debuts following high profile defections of writers and artists from the stables of Marvel and DC Comics. Mignola's writing and distinctive art, steeped in expressionism, gothic and Lovecraftian imagery with flourishes of whimsy, helped Hellboy stand out as a relative success, but its near underground origins make its two high profile and very faithful translations to film remarkable and indelibly linked to Del Toro's ascension in Hollywood.

As the director's follow up to his Spanish language Pan's Labyrinth (one of the very best films of recent years regardless of genre), Hellboy II borrows a few themes and visual motifs from that film and overall is less deferential to Mignola's designs than in the first Hellboy movie. As a result, Del Toro's deep imagination appears unleashed in a dizzying variety of characters and settings, embellished by a sumptuous color pallet that is by turns organic, otherworldly and lyrical. Hellboy's principal nemesis, Prince Nuada (portrayed by Luke Goss), strikes an arresting visual presence in particular and their confrontations are cleverly staged and energetic.

The movie's accessibility to non-genre enthusiasts resides in its sense of humor, the care Del Toro takes to humanize his characters, and the story's basic appeal to everyone's sense of imagination. He never betrays the world or themes he has constructed for a cheap joke, but still manages to let the audience have fun with the absurdity of it all and through the main character's world weary, lunch pail approach to problem solving.

Del Toro will segue from Hellboy II to directing highly anticipated prequels for The Lord of the Rings (The Hobbit and a second film bridging to the existing films) with trilogy director Peter Jackson producing. Fans of those films seeking reassurance the story is in the right hands will find plenty to like in Hellboy II and in the rest of Del Toro's filmography.