Hellboy II The Golden Army
December 2008 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: Blu-ray	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Creatures, creatures everywhere! All new and never seen before at that! One comes away from this film with visions of all the fantastic characters that have sprung from the vivid imaginations of Guillermo del Toro and his talented crew of designers. And that’s the good and the bad of this blockbuster film. The creatures provide acres of eye candy for the viewer, but they also detract from the plot. In one of the extras, del Toro mentions wanting to have enough critters that they won’t be noticeable, but will just be part of the fabric. What? A giant plant thingy with tentacles that springs up from a manhole cover and starts tossing around automobiles like crazy is not inconspicuous! Nor is the Angel of Death, a great ten-foot-tall creature that has its eyes on its wings.

Poor "Red," misunderstood cat-loving Hellboy (Ron Pearlman). He often gets lost in all of the competition. And as if that weren’t enough, he has to put up with the constant bickering of Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), now his wife. I frankly could have done without all of that back-and-forth dialogue. The same thing happened with the new Zorro sequel. Is this a new trend, to get everyone "happily ever aftering" in a first movie, only to have them quarreling in the next one? I surely hope not. If it held true, we might expect Amy Adams to be a shrew were there to be an Enchanted sequel. That would not be a pretty sight. Nor are the arguments between Hellboy and Liz. They detract from the plot and, combined with all the creatures, make Hellboy less a star of his own movie. The plot: Hellboy and his fellow agents try to stop an evil elf (Luke Goss) from resurrecting the Golden Army of robots and destroying the world.

This is not Shakespeare, many of you are already saying, and you’re right. Hellboy II is an SFX movie, and this Blu-ray release is an SFX demonstration disc. And taken at that, it delivers the goods. This is surely one of the best-looking Blu-ray Discs out there, third only to Baraka and WALL-E. Perhaps even more than those two, though, it really screams out "high definition." If you’d just purchased a Blu-ray player and this was your only Blu-ray Disc, you’d feel that you’d made a good investment. The details of all those creatures are clean and clear, and the shadowy worlds they often inhabit are also full of detail. Nothing is left in doubt. Memory is suspect in all things, but this disc actually "seemed" sharper than the print I saw early in the summer at my local multiplex.

Universal, which often gave us undernourished sound when it was HD DVD exclusive, has gone the extra mile for all of its Blu-ray releases. DTS-HD Master Audio lossless has become the default format, not a bad one to fall back on. All the strands of the elaborate mix used for this movie are clear as can be, and both the frequency and dynamic response are awesome. The audio for the Troll Market scene is of demonstration caliber.

Universal has not stinted with the extras, either. The first disc uses Universal’s exclusive "U Control" feature. There are four categories of picture-in-picture material you can summon: "Scene Explorer: Schuften Goggle View," "Set Visits," "The Concept Art Gallery," and "Director’s Notebook." That sounds like a lot, but the offerings, excellent and fun though they are, do not inhabit every chapter. If you have a 2.0 player and have your Ethernet umbilical plugged in, you can enjoy BD Live features on this first disc. And everyone, regardless of player format, can benefit from two informed commentary tracks.

Disc 2 has the two-and-a-half-hour "Hellboy: In Service of the Demon," which follows the production from beginning to end, shedding a lot of light on the creative process involved in bringing this fantasy film to the screen. Unfortunately it is not in HD and no doubt the same disc that is included in the two-disc DVD set. It does contain well-reproduced sets of still images, especially the ones that pertain to advertising art.

I liked Hellboy II better at home than in the theater, largely because of the nifty Blu-ray features and the incredible documentary, which did heighten my appreciation. Moreover, when I want to show an unknowing friend what Blu-ray is all about, I can pop in that Troll Market scene and watch his jaw drop.

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