“Hellboy” is your standard comic book movie and that’s its problem. It’s just standard and on that basis, I refuse to recommend it as people shouldn’t settle for this average entertainment.

Near the end of World War II, the Nazis resort to black magic. Hellboy (Ron Perlman “Drive”) comes out of a portal as an infant. He is brought up by Trevor Bruttenholm (John Hurt “Alien”). Hellboy works for the government fighting against the dark forces. The evil Grigori Rasputin (Karl Roden “Orphan”) attempts to use the same black magic the Nazis do to bring the dark forces to Earth. Now Hellboy must fight to save the planet.

Ron Perlman is reasonably good as Hellboy but he’s nothing special. John Hurt is good in this film (as he always is in his movies), he sort of plays Hellboy’s adopted father you could say. John Myers (Rupert Evans) is a government agent and he’s a rubbish character in my opinion. Sadly he gets a lot of screen-time. Liz Sherman (Selma Blair “Legally Blonde”) is sort of Hellboy’s girlfriend and she’s not memorable. Abe Sapien (Doug Jones “Pan’s Labyrinth”) is another strange creature like Hellboy and the two work together. The bad guy is average.

The action in “Hellboy” is reasonable, the characters are quite dull, the acting isn’t too special, the special effects are passable and the dialog is weak. “Hellboy” is okay but I don’t like to settle for films that are just okay. I demand more from movies and despite the fact “Hellboy” has good parts in it, I just don’t feel it has that extra kick in it. There are lots of things out there that are far worse than this and I’m not sure but I imagine fans of the Dark Horse comics will enjoy this one.