Hellboy (Blu-ray)

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There's a funny scene in "Stand by Me" where a bunch of 11-year-old boys walking the train tracks get into an argument over the powers of superheroes. "Who do you think would win in a fight, Mighty Mouse or Superman?" one of them asks. Well, if those same kids had seen Hellboy in action, there wouldn't have been much of an argument.

Hellboy is the baddest, coolest, most unlikely superhero to make the transition from comic books to the big screen. He's like a steely-eyed steelworker with a lunchbox, a chisel-jawed guy with a jackhammer that just happens to be his concrete right arm. How can you not love a superhero with a blue-collar attitude--a cigar-smoking, beer-drinking, wise-cracking fellow whose daily grind just happens to be fighting paranormal creatures? Oh, and did I mention he's also one of those creatures himself, raised to be good instead of evil? He's like the poster child for nurture over nature. Selma Blair, who plays the demon spawn's love interest, said she became a "Hellboy" fan immediately after seeing the movie. Me too. In fact, it blew me away, and so did this double-disc set packed to the brimstone with extras. As far as I'm concerned (and I realize I'm opening up a debate with just about every 11-year-old, train-track walking lad out there), "Hellboy" not only trounces Mighty Mouse. He also beats "Superman," "Batman," "Spider-Man," "Daredevil," and "The Hulk."

For one thing, the movie FEELS like a living, breathing comic book, and that's been hard to pull off. Too often the superhero films take a left turn into caricature land, or they feel like movies about people pretending to be comic book heroes. Or else they're too serious, or too tongue-in-cheek. Maybe it's because director Guillermo del Toro brought "Hellboy" creator Mike Mignola onboard as a collaborator and co-executive producer, or that the pair had worked together before when del Toro directed "Blade II" and Mignola served as concept artist. Or maybe it's because the movie's characters look so uncannily like their comic book counterparts-so much so that Mignola says when he first saw John Hurt as Professor Bruttenholm, Hellboy's "father," he wondered if he subconsciously thought of Hurt when he was first drawing the character. Then there's Ron Perlman's stogie-puffing and horn-filing performance, the way he makes Hellboy believably come to life, as well as a strong supporting cast. And special effects? This is a film where that adjective seems at home. There's nothing contrived about the amazing effects that rival those from "The Matrix." Hellboy looks as real as his human father, and the Sammael hounds of hell, behemoth, and corpses look as real as Hellboy. Everything flows into an organic whole, like a stack of "Hellboy" comics flipped into animation and converted, with no loss of color, cleverness, or characters, into live action. And you know what? That's the biggest reason for the film's success. Nothing gets lost in translation. Frame by frame the movie stays pretty faithful to the comic books, though del Toro added a love interest, developed the father-son connection, and made the main Nazi more of a nemesis.

Following an epigraph and a voiceover flashback narration by "Broom" Bruttenhold, the action begins in 1944, where the Russian black magic man Grigory Rasputin (Karel Roden) is helping the Nazis wreak havoc on the world by opening a portal into another dimension, hoping to unleash the Ogdru Jahad, the Seven Gods of Chaos. But an American military team, led by paranormal adviser Bruttenholm, breaks things up in a nick of time . . . almost. But when the portal was open, a baby snuck through. This little devil (literally, except for a large right arm) is instantly "tamed" by the professor's offer of a WWII-era Baby Ruth (what, no nylons?), and imp dubbed "Hellboy" is transported back to the United States, where he's housed at the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense set up by the professor at the request of President Roosevelt. But the baby devil isn't the only thing to survive the raid. The gas-mask wearing Nazi with twin rapiers and Ninja-like moves managed to survive, as did the evil and seemingly unstoppable Rasputin.

Cut to the present day, where Rasputin's revival in the Eastern Europe is neatly juxtaposed against the professor's diagnosis at an oncology center in New York. Now that he's dying, the professor needs to find another "handler" for Hellboy, and he summons FBI agent John Myers (Rupert Evans) to the center. Myers gets off to a rough start with Hellboy, but soon earns the superhero's respect . . . and distrust. You see, Myers also seems to be slightly taken with the 6'9", 350-pound red man's love interest, Liz (Blair), another paranormal who had been a part of the BPRD but was recently in a sanatarium, all because of her strange ability to go pyrotechnic in a moment of anger. But the love angle is small potatoes compared to the main plot, in which Rasputin returns again with meat on his bones, convinced that Hellboy is the Beast of the Apocalypse. He and the gas-mask wearing Kroenen summon the hounds of hell from the depths to take on Hellboy and his cohorts, while bureau bureaucrat supreme Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) tries to lead Hellboy, his fish-like sidekick Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), Liz, and Myers on a final mission to defeat the forces of darkness. Toward the end, the action sags just a bit-but not enough to where you'd want to forage for snacks, because the climax is suitably climactic, with more eye-popping CGI, puppetry, and rope-work effects. There were moments in "Daredevil" where you were reminded during stunts that these guys were wearing wires. Not so here.