For
me, Hollow Man was one of the most highly anticipated films of the summer. After
all, it featured one of the best coming attraction trailers of the year, stars
a very underrated Kevin Bacon, and was directed by Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Total
Recall) a master at the technical aspects of film making. Alas, Verhoeven has
never excelled at picking screenplays with decent dialogue ( see Showgirls), and
certainly, Hollow Man is further proof of that fact. Kevin Bacon plays Sebastian
Caine, a scientist who, along with the help of his dreadfully one dimensional
crew, creates a serum that renders it's user invisible. Of course, bringing the
subject back doesn't come as easy.
Things
go wrong when the government tells Caine they will terminate his project unless
he delivers immediate results. This prompts Caine to take the serum himself. While
invisible, he realizes the unlimited power he actually has, and uses it to full
effect. Let's start with the special effects. They are truly breathtaking, and
definitely some of the best I've seen in a long time.
The
scene in which Caine becomes invisible for the first time is mind blowing. There
are also several moments in which we see Caine's shape revealed such as when he's
dripping with water or appearing in smoke. Verhoeven directs the effects scenes
in this film with a graceful flow and slam bang energy that rarely give you a
chance to breathe. He also injects a a small dose of his trademark sexual perversity.
Unfortunately,
what starts off as a strong morality tale, slowly degenerates into what is essentially
a big budget slasher film with terrible acting and absolutely awful dialogue.
This works in some of Verhoeven's other films (such as Starship Troopers) because
they are dealing with a lot of satire, but Hollow Man is meant to be taken a little
more seriously.
Even
more disappointing, the entire second half of the film takes place in the lab
compound, while Sebastian picks off his crew of fellow scientists one by one.
Like What Lies Beneath, Hollow Man becomes so calculated in it's execution that
nothing seems surprising. It would have been nice to see Caine go out into the
real world and maybe go through some kind of psychological transformation. As
it stands, Caine is already sort of a creepy egomaniac to begin with, so no descent
into evil really takes place. And although there is a motive for him to kill members
of his crew, I never really believed he was capable of doing so.
Finally,
towards the end of the film, it's as if Caine begins to exhibit superhuman strength,
rebounding from many things that would surely kill a man instantly. This further
takes his character into Jason VorheesFreddy Krueger territory.
Hollow
Man is also a blatant waste of talent with very little quality time given to the
likes of Josh Brolin (The Goonies), and Elizabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas). Bacon
really gets into his character and was apparently put through a living hell to
bring some of these images to the screen. Even in the invisibility sequences,
he was actually on set and matted out of the film in post production. This is
also not a film without it's creepy moments.
When
Caine is covered only by a mask, and you are able to see right through his eye
slits, it's downright chilling. Alas, Hollow Man is nothing more than "eye
candy" thanks to an almost, if you'll pardon the pun, invisible screenplay.
Instead of giving us an interesting character study and tapping into that fear
of whether or not were really alone while sitting home on a rainy night, we get
a B-movie thriller with high caliber effects. Hollow Man reminded me of a similar
but better film John Carpenter's underrated Memoirs of an Invisible Man. It may
not have had the same hardware, but it definitely had a better story.
