Hollow Man
When I was a kid - when dinosaurs ruled the earth, rocks were young and there were only three television stations in Kansas City - I was hopelessly hooked on moovies. Some things, it seems, never change. Back then the primitive broadcast conditions allowed me to watch only black and white moovies on television, which really wasn't that important, because our old Admiral cabinet model, half the size of a refrigerator, only got black and white, and it wasn't until NASA moon landing was imminent that my dad finally got with the program and laid out the two months' income on a color set. But I digress....
Late Show moovies on the old Admiral were largely horror films, war moovies or comedies, and of the horror films, I was mesmerized by King Kong, the Frankenstein moovies, the Werewolf series and anything with Bela Lugosi. But by far, my favorite was James Whale's 1933 landmark thriller, "The Invisible Man" starring Claude Rains. Nothing lights up a pre-pubescent male's imagination quite like the notion of being able to creep around, unseen, and do whatever they feel like. And yes, the idea still appeals to me, thank you for asking. I can't imagine many situations, from going to the car wash to airline travel, that couldn't be improved, or at least made more entertaining by a liberal dose of personal invisibility. The mind races.
Sixty-seven years after Claude Rains, we get, in glorious living color, "Hollow Man", with Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin and William Devane. Written by Gary Scott Thompson and Andrew W. Marlowe. Directed by Paul Verhoeven. MPAA rating R for violence, sexuality, nudity, language, blood, guts, gore and abuse of the laws of physics. Run time 116 minutes.
In the world of the moovies, anything is possible, and I suppose to some extent, that's the way it should be; in the moovies the good guys shoot straight, extraterrestrials are waddling alien frog headed things that scare little Drew Barrymore, and Adam Sandler is funny. Yeah, right. More importantly, the moovies allow nutty ideas to take flight, aided by our tacit agreement to not notice the strings the marionettes are dangling from. "Hollow Man" falls into this category, a mass hallucination of suspended disbelief.
Kevin Bacon (with a Bacon number of 0) is Sebastian Caine, a scientist of unspecified qualification whose picture likely appears in the dictionary next to the definition of "megalomaniac". His pet project is making living things disappear. Not Jimmy Hoffa disappear, but Claude Rains disappear - he makes them invisible. Cool trick, eh? He thinks so, the government thinks so and that's even cooler because Sam's writing the checks to keep this project going.
At his side is Linda Foster, (Elisabeth Shue) able bodied scientist in her own right and prior consort to Caine. The Shue, however, is now on the other foot, and Caine seethes at the notion that he's been bested in any way. When he later discovers it's a scientist in his own lab that's beating his time, the poop hits the prop.
Meanwhile, back at the subterranean laboratory full of totally made up stuff that doesn't work like anything in the real world, invisible critters are crawling all over the place, waiting for the final piece of the puzzle - the restoration of their ability to reflect light. After a gorilla's reversion, (a jaw-dropping special effects scene) Caine decides, without benefit of the government's approval, that it's time for human trials, and who better to go down in the annals of stupid human tricks as the first victim than his own personal egotistical self. By this time, you'd be willing to try anything to help him with his own disappearance, so you applaud his bravado and settle in for the show.
Caine indeed disappears (in yet another jaw-dropping special effects sequence) and immediately upon regaining consciousness screams in pain because the lights are too bright. Mr. Super-Genius hadn't counted on being able to see through his invisible eyelids. (Nor, for that matter, did anyone ever bother to figure out that with invisible retinas, Caine, Claude Rains' Dr. Jack Griffin, or any of the hundreds of invisible characters in moovies down through the years would be anything less than totally blind. Duh!)
After a suitable period of adjustment, Caine starts to work out the various fringe benefits of being invisible - and what's the first thing he does? Only the guys answer here ---- fellas? Right, he cops a feel off the shapely lab vet. He then graduates from groper to peeping Tom to stalker/rapist and finally to murderer. At no time are you even remotely surprised by his actions - this guy was a six-pack of trouble waiting to be shaken, and not helped one bit by the researchers in his lab who make a mask for him out of what seems to be Pepto-Bismol, Bondo and Cream of Wheat, which they then slather all over him and then fail to cut out nostrils or ear holes. The poor guy goes from eminent scientist to an earless mouth-breathing mole. Apparently, Caine finally learns Claude Rains' lesson the hard way - invisibility makes you crazy. Funny, it's never bothered me.
After Caine helps to set up the basic story line, the plot is totally transparent, and it soon becomes crystal clear that what we have here is not much more than an "Alien"-style pursuit moovie - except that instead of Sigourney Weaver we get Elisabeth Shue, and instead of the acid-spewing space-bug, we get a Kevin Bacon voice-over. What you've seen in the trailers tells a lot about what happens, and I won't elaborate much, except to say that for most of the moovie, you can see right through Caine and his motives. All right, I'll stop.
Director Paul Verhoeven, of "Showgirls" infamy, leads us down another misogynistic path in "Hollow Man". The man has issues. I just don't think he likes women very much. The good news is that the pacing is excellent, and as special effects moovies go, this one is quite the trip. The transitions between the visible and invisible are incredible, and the glimpses of Inviso-Caine via water, smoke and other fluids are a new high in effectsmanship. If it isn't already obvious, this isn't really what you'd call an "actor's" moovie.
"Hollow Man" falls into the deep Hollywood rut of allowing the villain to keep springing back to life, no matter how many times or how gruesomely he dies. Caine dies two or three time in "Hollow Man", and keeps coming back for more. Eats up a good fifteen minutes bouncing back. The cool part is that he keeps coming back without benefit of skin and a few other miscellaneous body parts.
Bad science and plenty of it doesn't keep "Hollow Man" from being worth a look, if only for the effects, and it's a pretty fair nail-biter at times, but if you want a moovie with a real plot, or a moovie where nearly everybody you like doesn't die, skip it.
Effects for effects sake, "Hollow Man" is a fairly hollow moovie. Wrap your head in a big ol' ace bandage and throw on a pair of Ray-Bans, suspend your disbelief one more time and go see it with my two cows. What? You only see one cow? Hey, it works!
Late Show moovies on the old Admiral were largely horror films, war moovies or comedies, and of the horror films, I was mesmerized by King Kong, the Frankenstein moovies, the Werewolf series and anything with Bela Lugosi. But by far, my favorite was James Whale's 1933 landmark thriller, "The Invisible Man" starring Claude Rains. Nothing lights up a pre-pubescent male's imagination quite like the notion of being able to creep around, unseen, and do whatever they feel like. And yes, the idea still appeals to me, thank you for asking. I can't imagine many situations, from going to the car wash to airline travel, that couldn't be improved, or at least made more entertaining by a liberal dose of personal invisibility. The mind races.
Sixty-seven years after Claude Rains, we get, in glorious living color, "Hollow Man", with Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin and William Devane. Written by Gary Scott Thompson and Andrew W. Marlowe. Directed by Paul Verhoeven. MPAA rating R for violence, sexuality, nudity, language, blood, guts, gore and abuse of the laws of physics. Run time 116 minutes.
In the world of the moovies, anything is possible, and I suppose to some extent, that's the way it should be; in the moovies the good guys shoot straight, extraterrestrials are waddling alien frog headed things that scare little Drew Barrymore, and Adam Sandler is funny. Yeah, right. More importantly, the moovies allow nutty ideas to take flight, aided by our tacit agreement to not notice the strings the marionettes are dangling from. "Hollow Man" falls into this category, a mass hallucination of suspended disbelief.
Kevin Bacon (with a Bacon number of 0) is Sebastian Caine, a scientist of unspecified qualification whose picture likely appears in the dictionary next to the definition of "megalomaniac". His pet project is making living things disappear. Not Jimmy Hoffa disappear, but Claude Rains disappear - he makes them invisible. Cool trick, eh? He thinks so, the government thinks so and that's even cooler because Sam's writing the checks to keep this project going.
At his side is Linda Foster, (Elisabeth Shue) able bodied scientist in her own right and prior consort to Caine. The Shue, however, is now on the other foot, and Caine seethes at the notion that he's been bested in any way. When he later discovers it's a scientist in his own lab that's beating his time, the poop hits the prop.
Meanwhile, back at the subterranean laboratory full of totally made up stuff that doesn't work like anything in the real world, invisible critters are crawling all over the place, waiting for the final piece of the puzzle - the restoration of their ability to reflect light. After a gorilla's reversion, (a jaw-dropping special effects scene) Caine decides, without benefit of the government's approval, that it's time for human trials, and who better to go down in the annals of stupid human tricks as the first victim than his own personal egotistical self. By this time, you'd be willing to try anything to help him with his own disappearance, so you applaud his bravado and settle in for the show.
Caine indeed disappears (in yet another jaw-dropping special effects sequence) and immediately upon regaining consciousness screams in pain because the lights are too bright. Mr. Super-Genius hadn't counted on being able to see through his invisible eyelids. (Nor, for that matter, did anyone ever bother to figure out that with invisible retinas, Caine, Claude Rains' Dr. Jack Griffin, or any of the hundreds of invisible characters in moovies down through the years would be anything less than totally blind. Duh!)
After a suitable period of adjustment, Caine starts to work out the various fringe benefits of being invisible - and what's the first thing he does? Only the guys answer here ---- fellas? Right, he cops a feel off the shapely lab vet. He then graduates from groper to peeping Tom to stalker/rapist and finally to murderer. At no time are you even remotely surprised by his actions - this guy was a six-pack of trouble waiting to be shaken, and not helped one bit by the researchers in his lab who make a mask for him out of what seems to be Pepto-Bismol, Bondo and Cream of Wheat, which they then slather all over him and then fail to cut out nostrils or ear holes. The poor guy goes from eminent scientist to an earless mouth-breathing mole. Apparently, Caine finally learns Claude Rains' lesson the hard way - invisibility makes you crazy. Funny, it's never bothered me.
After Caine helps to set up the basic story line, the plot is totally transparent, and it soon becomes crystal clear that what we have here is not much more than an "Alien"-style pursuit moovie - except that instead of Sigourney Weaver we get Elisabeth Shue, and instead of the acid-spewing space-bug, we get a Kevin Bacon voice-over. What you've seen in the trailers tells a lot about what happens, and I won't elaborate much, except to say that for most of the moovie, you can see right through Caine and his motives. All right, I'll stop.
Director Paul Verhoeven, of "Showgirls" infamy, leads us down another misogynistic path in "Hollow Man". The man has issues. I just don't think he likes women very much. The good news is that the pacing is excellent, and as special effects moovies go, this one is quite the trip. The transitions between the visible and invisible are incredible, and the glimpses of Inviso-Caine via water, smoke and other fluids are a new high in effectsmanship. If it isn't already obvious, this isn't really what you'd call an "actor's" moovie.
"Hollow Man" falls into the deep Hollywood rut of allowing the villain to keep springing back to life, no matter how many times or how gruesomely he dies. Caine dies two or three time in "Hollow Man", and keeps coming back for more. Eats up a good fifteen minutes bouncing back. The cool part is that he keeps coming back without benefit of skin and a few other miscellaneous body parts.
Bad science and plenty of it doesn't keep "Hollow Man" from being worth a look, if only for the effects, and it's a pretty fair nail-biter at times, but if you want a moovie with a real plot, or a moovie where nearly everybody you like doesn't die, skip it.
Effects for effects sake, "Hollow Man" is a fairly hollow moovie. Wrap your head in a big ol' ace bandage and throw on a pair of Ray-Bans, suspend your disbelief one more time and go see it with my two cows. What? You only see one cow? Hey, it works!
