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Now, 30 years later, Rasputin's after Hellboy in order to "finish the job." How? It's complicated. Suffice to say that there's something special about Hellboy, something only he can do to give evil the upper hand. (Hint, hint.)

Rasputin has help, two secret weapons that are as hard to kill as their master. Monster #1 is Kronen, a zombie ninja with a clockwork heart. He's like a walking Ginsu-knife demonstration. It's likely he went to school with Darth Maul and X2's Lady Deathstryke. He's mysterious too, until we see him unmasked as a prime candidate for Extreme Makeover.

Monster #2 is the Sammael, a demon built like a hairless lion with a head that's half-squid, half-beetle. But when he pounces into the open, he's not scary—he's just ugly. He's every exterminator's worst nightmare: Whenever he's killed, he replicates himself twice. He's a "resurrection demon," you see.

This all sounds cooler than it is. Rasputin and Ilsa are posers without personality. The Sammael are just dumb animals for Hellboy to squash. (Aren't demons supposed to be spiritually unsettling?) Only Kronen earns our serious concern with his lurking, slicing and dicing.

The explosive clashes of good and evil only serve to blow more holes in the plot. Abundant Catholic symbolism adds a sense of importance to these events, but that never amounts to much either. Abe wears a holy relic for protection. Hellboy carries a gun in one hand, rosary beads in the other, and he gets a cross tattoo. But these are treated merely as talismans—good help in a fight, like a bulletproof vest or garlic against vampires. There is no suggestion of what they mean. Hellboy regrets his hellish origins so much that he grinds down his horns to look more human. But he's far more interested in his girlfriend Liz than in showing gratitude to the source of the grace that redeemed him.

Selma Blair as Liz Sherman

Disregarding the dumb plot and vague religiosity, it's Hellboy himself and his love story that keeps the film from falling apart. His true love, Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), isn't much of a character. She's basically Stephen King's Firestarter, an alienated girl with an oh-so-combustible temper. Blair plays her so glamourlessly that she's almost boring. But we care about her because Hellboy does. His affection for her is what makes him sympathetic. Who hasn't fallen for someone and felt awkward and unqualified?

The best scene in the film comes during an interlude between Sammael smackdown matches, when Hellboy shadows Myers and Liz, determined to ensure that they do not fall in love. He finds himself on a rooftop with an unlikely new friend, and his distress is a wonderful thing.

In fact, all of the film's high points are incidental character moments: a conversation about cigars, the way Hellboy responds when kittens are in danger, witty repartee between "H-B" and a laryngitic half-resurrected corpse.

Hellboy tells Liz to keep her chin up

Guillermo Del Toro is a talented director of drama and mystery. 2001's The Devil's Backbone is a great ghost story and a sorely overlooked film. But Del Toro does not yet know how to give action scenes a sense of momentum. Through most of the film, Hellboy just trudges along like a dutiful Ghostbuster, chopping up slimy Sammael demons like sushi. The action is thunderous and chaotic, but it never develops the exhilarating thrill of the X-Men films. The big finale wraps up with an anticlimactic trick right out of Men in Black.

As watchable and likeable as he is, Perlman's Hellboy eventually seems as tired of the action as we are. When the film wraps up with some painfully sentimental narration that tries to tell us what this story means, we just want to follow our hero home, watch him play with the kittens, and have some pizza.

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