Year:
2000
Studio:
Columbia Pictures
Movie:
3/5
DVD:
3/5
Doctor Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) is a brilliant scientist. He and
his team are working on a Top Secret project -- the secret of
invisiblity. As the movie starts, we see that yes, the group has
actually made a gorilla invisible. Unfortunately, the problem has been
turning the gorilla visible. Meanwhile the gorilla has been becoming
more and more mentally unstable.
Luckily for our gorilla, Sebastian does come up with the visible
formula. And once that is done, it is only natural that he be the first
human test subject. His research associates, Linda McKay (Elisabeth
Shue) and Matthew Kensington (Josh Brolin) are cajoled into going along
with his plan. And it works. Sebastian becomes the first invisible
human being.
Unfortunately, when it is time to turn Sebastian visible, the formula
doesn't work. Now it's a race to find a cure as Sebastian slowly goes
over the edge. Of course, when he does succumb to the madness, it's his
hapless team that bears the brunt of the death and destruction. Soon it
's a personal battle between Linda and Sebastian. Only one of them gets
out the lab alive.
Hollow Man is a science fiction thriller with the simple theme of "what
happens when a man gets a super power?" In this case the man is not a
paragon of human decency and the results are almost inevitable. That's
not to say that the movie is predictable, far from it.
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The
invisibility special effects are outstanding. Kevin Bacon is actually
there in all his shots, painted blue or green or black. Quite taxing
for him but it means that the body in the clothes moves like
Kevin Bacon. The end result is an invisible person who is there with
partial clothes, or in smoke or water and you know that there is a
person there.
The DVD has a commentary track with director Paul Verhoeven, actor
Kevin Bacon and writer Andrew Marlow. It's nothing special as they
talked more about the scenes and special effects than the moviemaking
behind the scenes. Other extras are a 15-minute making of, about 25
minutes of how the special effects were done, three deleted scenes and
some miscellaneous other things.
What did I like? Great special effects, good creepy/scary factor,
female heroine. What didn't I like? Once you get past the special
effects it's not an exceptional story in and of itself. Arguably, the
main feature are the special effects. But in the end the movie didn't
grab me hard enough for a "wow" effect.
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