By David DiCerto
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- A hell-spawned hero uses his infernal powers to save the world in the comic book-inspired action adventure "Hellboy" (Revolution).

Back in the late 1980s, Ron Perlman gave "animal magnetism" a whole new meaning as the hairy half of the equation in the "Beauty and the Beast" TV series. As the title character in "Hellboy," Perlman trades in his furry face and Brothers Grimm duds to play a scarlet-skinned, cigar-chomping demon, who packs a mean punch to back up his repertoire of cheeky one-liners. But underneath his filed-down horns and gruff, tomato-toned hide is a heart as big as his sledge hammer-sized right fist.

The film opens on an appropriately dark and stormy night on an isolated island off Scotland during World War II. The Nazis, aided by the evil Russian mystic Rasputin (Karel Roden), are trying to tip the scale of victory via black magic by using a "hell-hole generator" to summon the "seven gods of chaos" to earth.

A platoon of Allied commandos has been charged with derailing their efforts, along with Professor Trevor "Broom" Bruttenholm (Kevin Trainor), the head of the super-secret U.S. Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. As Broom says of the bureau, "There are things that go bump in the night. We're the ones who bump back." The Nazis are stopped, but not before a pint-sized hobgoblin sneaks through the crack opened up by the generator.

Taking a cue from the Rolling Stones, Broom shows sympathy for the devil and adopts the fork-tailed foundling, naming him Hellboy -- H.B. to his friends. In a victory of nurture over nature, H.B. grows into a muscular Mephistopheles, becoming an unlikely champion of good, who battles the forces of evil alongside his paternal-minded surrogate (who has aged into John Hurt).

David Hyde Pierce lends his voice as the fish-faced Abe Sapien, H.B.'s mer-man teammate at the clandestine bureau.

As directed by Guillermo del Toro and true to its comic book origins, the movie has a rather slim story line, padded by bloated special-effects sequences. Though festooned with moody Gothic atmospherics, the bare-bones plot follows a standard buddy-cop formula involving Hellboy breaking in a new BPRD partner, John Myers (Rupert Evans), whom the ailing Broom is grooming to take care of H.B. once he is gone. Most of Hellboy's time is spent duking it out with tentacled monsters conjured from the dark side by an evil madman, who turns out to be a reincarnated Rasputin (don't ask). Apparently the necromancer needs Hellboy to embrace his demonic destiny and usher in the apocalypse, which will literally turn the world into a hell on earth.

Things get sticky when Hellboy thinks Myers is making the moves on Lizz (Selma Blair), a melancholy pyro-kinetic for whom H.B. carries an unrequited torch. Who better for the helltown hero than a girl who spontaneously bursts into flames?

Perlman is terrific as the good-guy gargoyle, imbuing what could easily have been a cartoonish, one-dimensional role with sensitivity and wickedly funny sardonic wit. His devil-may-care performance goes a long way in making up for the lame script.

Despite his dark origins, Hellboy is just your average blue-collar joe, ready to rumble with a squid the size of a sequoia, but shy around the ladies. Like the misunderstood mutants of the "X-Men" franchise, Hellboy selflessly fights to protect the very people who consider him a monster.

Still, some Christian viewers may find it troubling being asked to root for a denizen of demonville. It says something disheartening about our culture when we have to look into the deepest bowels of hell to find heroes. And while the film is full of Catholic symbolism, the religious objects (rosaries, etc.), as used by the characters, remain superficial talismans -- like crucifixes in vampire movies -- and lack any meaningful spiritual significance.

The movie opens with a question, "What is it that makes a man a man?" The answer suggested by the filmmaker is that belted by Ethel Merman: It's not where you start, it's where you finish -- even if you had the misfortune of starting in hell. As Catholics, we believe that damnation -- and for that matter salvation -- depends not on some sort of Calvinistic doomed-from-the-womb predestination, but on the sum of the choices we make using our free will in cooperation with (or rejection of) God's grace.

In the end H.B. realizes that the truest definition of hell is existing without love -- on that point, comics and catechism agree.

Due to abundant comic book violence, recurring occult elements and some crude language, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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DiCerto is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.