# Hollow Man (2000)

### reviewed by
Shannon Patrick Sullivan

    HOLLOW MAN (2000) / *

Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Screenplay by Andrew W Marlowe from a story by Gary Scott Thompson and Marlowe. Starring Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated R for extreme violence and offensive language throughout by the MFCB. Reviewed on August 7th, 2000.

    By SHANNON PATRICK SULLIVAN

What would you do if you could turn invisible? The possibilities are virtually limitless. There are the cheap, visceral thrills, such as sneaking into changing rooms and dormitories. There are more noble pursuits, like acting as a genuine force for good in your community. Perhaps you could offer your services to the government as a crack espionage agent. Well, if the makers of "Hollow Man" are to believed, you'd probably take a page from any generic slasher movie of the past twenty-five years and start hunting down your friends in gory, if not particularly imaginative, ways. Uh huh.

Inspired by, though not really similar to, HG Wells' novel "The Invisible Man", "Hollow Man" is about a team of scientists trying to create an invisibility formula (here it's described as "going out of quantum synch" with the universe, but of course that's just the technobabble explanation). The project head is Dr Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon), an arrogant genius with more than a slight streak of megalomania. His assistants include ex-girlfriend Linda (Elisabeth Shue) and Matt (Josh Brolin), who are sleeping together behind Sebastian's back.

In fact, the team has already figured out how to make people become invisible -- the problem lies in trying to reverse the effects. In a flash of inspiration one night, Sebastian thinks he figures it out, and indeed their test gorilla Isabelle is successfully made visible again. Without informing his superiors, Sebastian decides to proceed to the next stage of the experiment and test both serums on a human subject: himself. But although he becomes invisible without undue difficulty, the antidote proves to be useless on humans, and Sebastian is trapped in his phantomlike state. Soon, the tantalising possibilities invisibility offers become too much for Sebastian, and he begins to succumb to his base desires.

"Hollow Man" falls short in all moviemaking fundamentals: plot, characterisation, atmosphere. Even Paul Verhoeven's directorial flair, striking in "Total Recall" ten years ago, is absent here, as the director continues the downward spiral most recently evident in the tedious "Starship Troopers". I find it appalling that a movie can take such a great, multifaceted concept -- invisibility -- and hogtie itself to a standard old slasher storyline. And "Hollow Man" isn't even a particularly good slasher film, because we're not so much as afforded an interesting death sequence. Sebastian's murderous rampage, when it finally comes, is without tension, excitement, or invention. It's just an invisible guy killing people, as if that single gimmick would somehow enliven the entire film. There's no effort to create any suspense, or to really shock the viewer; it just feels like the filmmakers are going through the motions, and rather feebly at that.

Personally, I'm more interested in special effects where I can see something, rather than those where I can't. Sure, a good job is done to achieve the appearance (as it were) of invisibility, and I'm sure it took a lot of hard work, but the gosh-wow factor is exhausted pretty quickly. The same goes for the scenes where Sebastian suddenly becomes semi-visible, when he is immersed in water or smoke or whatever. The first such sequence is appealing; the concept gets tired soon thereafter. Indeed, the only effects which really left an impression on me were the scenes where the invisibility formula and its antidote are employed -- first on a gorilla, then on Sebastian. Instead of taking effect all at once, the serums work layer by layer, giving us a view of the inner workings of the bodies like an anatomy textbook brought to life.

Beyond this, there is little to recommend "Hollow Man". Kevin Bacon does a reasonable job in a role in which his voicework is paramount. But Sebastian Caine is a desperately uninteresting character. We are robbed of the chance to investigate whether or not it is invisibility which has affected his mind, because he's clearly on the edge even before the experiment. A far more interesting approach to have taken would have been to give us a less unscrupulous character and really delve into the temptations he experiences. Sebastian is already such a bastard that his swift decision to abandon his already loose morals comes as little surprise. I realise that "Hollow Man" is, first and foremost, a thriller, and I am not suggesting that it should have been bogged down in ethical posturing. But I think a more clever movie could have balanced its protagonist's inner turmoil with the requisite action scenes.

To make matters worse, the screenplay by Andrew W Marlowe (from a story co-conceived with Gary Scott Thompson) doesn't even come up with interesting things for the invisible Sebastian to do. Indeed, of all the scenes involving Sebastian's abuse of his power, the only one that's at all intriguing is the very first one, where he molests a co-worker (Kim Dickens), with her being only barely aware of it. There is a definite eroticism to this scene, not the least because of the conflict previously established between the two characters. But it's all downhill from there -- we subsequently get another excuse for partial nudity, and then it's slasher time. That such a fantastic premise is so thoroughly wasted is the surest sign of the sheer creative bankruptcy of the movie.

Amongst the supporting cast, Shue and Brolin try gamely to play the heroes, but neither of their characters have much personality to speak of. The film's engagement in a bit of role reversal, casting Shue as the more proactive of the pair, is but a minor triumph. Most of the other characters are simply there to act as cannon fodder, although Dickens and Joey Slotnick make the most of their small roles. No fair guessing who survives and who doesn't, though. In order to surprised on that point, there would have to be some imagination behind the movie. On the set of "Hollow Man", it seems that bodies weren't the only things made to vanish.

Copyright © 2000 Shannon Patrick Sullivan. Archived at The Popcorn Gallery, http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/movies/HollowMan.html

_______________________________________________________________________ / Shannon Patrick Sullivan | "We are all in the gutter, but some of us \ | shannon@mun.ca | are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde | \___________________________|__________________________________________/ | Popcorn Gallery Movie Reviews www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/movies.html | | Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time (Travel) /drwho.html |

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