Movie review – Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Ron Perlman as Hellboy in “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” 

“Hellboy 2: The Golden Army” brings back the cigar-chomping, wisecracking paranormal agent with the indestructible hand and big red body from the first “Hellboy.” Ron Perlman reprises his role as the most powerful agent of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, nicknamed “Red.” He and girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair), a pyrokinetic, are having off-and-on problems, largely based around Red’s loutishness: He leaves her toothbrush in the cat food, for one.

Elfin Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), angered by the humans’ constant encroachment on the elfin world, breaks a pact long-forgotten by the humans. The humans and the elves ended a long-ago war by agreeing to a truce — the elves would stay in the forests and the humans to the cities. But, as Nuada declares, the parking lots and shopping malls have driven the elves from their homes. He will reawaken the Golden Army, a clockwork grouping of 14,400 soldiers, built by a goblin for the elf king to answer the aggression of humanity in the first war. Nuada reclaims part of the crown needed to rule the Golden Army from an auction house — slaughtering the bidders in the process, with demented “tooth fairies” — so called because of their desire to feed on bones and teeth.

Hellboy and his BPRD crew, now led by the ectoplasmic German Johann Krauss (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) seek the Troll Market for clues to who unleashed the tooth fairies.

Fish-man Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) encounters Nuala (Anna Walton), Nuada’s twin sister, who wishes to keep her brother from awakening the Golden Army.