Neil Marshall

  • Hellboy (2019)

    Hellboy (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) I suppose that if you must replace Ron Perlman as Hellboy, then David Harbour is not a bad choice at all. But it’s Guillermo del Toro’s absence at the helm that is most deeply felt in the 2019 Hellboy reboot. Neil Marshall is not a bad director, but del Toro’s affection for monsters and his unmistakable touch for the fantastic are what held the previous two Hellboy films together, and it’s sorely missing here. There are quite a few things that I do like here: Finally seeing fully-horned King Hellboy is nice, and the acting talent on display does include names such as Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane and Daniel Dae Kim playing were-cheetah. Harbour himself does well, and the special effects work is fun when supernatural weirdness and wide-scale destruction hit London. But the rest of the film isn’t as bad as it is instantly forgettable. The bland story retreads material far better handled in the earlier films; the tone has a lot of trouble keeping balance between end-of-the-world stakes and sardonic humour, and the over-the-top gore is off-putting, bordering on disgusting. In the end, this Hellboy feels juvenile, graceless and meaningless compared to del Toro’s dark poetry, and while this could have passed muster had earlier Hellboy films had not existed, they not only existed but justified the existence of this one. Once upon a time, Hollywood missed a fantastic opportunity to do a Hellboy 3 – but they missed it, and we’re never going to get that back, or anything approaching it.

  • Doomsday (2008)

    Doomsday (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2009) I suppose we shouldn’t begrudge the boys a bit of fun when then set out to make a Scottish post-apocalyptic horror/action film featuring a gun-toting babe.  Still, Doomsday most often feels like a tedious rehash of about half a dozen far better films, made with mechanical skills and little inspiration.  The plot points are so painfully contrived that they create resentment and very little viewer buy-in.  (A plague contained by locking off Scotland?  Uh-huh.)  By the time we reach the cannibalistic barbarians inspired by Prodigy videos and then a pseudo-medieval tyrant, it’s obvious that if Doomsday has anything left to show us, it will be in bits and pieces of direction, not in the overall script or end result.  Director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) is lost in the woods during most of the film, but from time to time there’s a striking shot or action set-piece that reminds us of his past successes and makes us wish this was a far better film.  Rhona Mitra (presumably standing-in for Kate Beckinsale) is the only one besides Bob Hoskins who emerges from this film with even a smidgen of respect left.  The action tends to be on the splattery side, something that the “unrated” DVD version tends to maximize to very little improvement over the theatrical version.  After a ludicrous car chase that is still better than most of the film, the ending fizzles off –much like the rest of Doomsday.  It is what it is, one supposes –but there’s a reason why it disappeared from North American theatres in mere days. The DVD extra features make it clearer that the picture was aiming for a deliberate hommage to SF exploitation pictures and is reasonably entertaining in describing how to do wide-scale action on a budget… but don’t redeem the end result.