Giving a twist to the Invisble Man formula, Hollow Man is a thriller wherein the invisible one is not a friendly crimefighter and dogooder but substantially more sinister. This movie stars Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Caine, a brilliant and egotistical scientist tasked with developing a procedure to turn people invisible (and back).

Even though Bacon acted as much as anyone else in the movie and probably had a lot more work, he is only on screen for the first half hour. Great special effects to do the invisibility with lots of floating clothes and man-shaped wisps through water and fog. I know he was wearing a blue getup so he could act with everyone else and they could react to him.

In any event, Elisabeth Shue plays Linda McKay, probably second in command of the project. Linda and Sebastian had a relationship, but Linda discovered that the idea of Sebastian paled to the reality. Linda is in the middle of another relationship with another team member, Matthew Kensington, played by Josh Brolin. Sebastian, Linda and Matthew are the primary researchers.

Rounding out the team are Sarah Kennedy (Kim Dickens), some sort of animal expert; Carter Abbey (Greg Grunberg), an EMT specialist; Frank Chase (Joey Slotnick) and Janice Walton (Mary Randle), who man the monitoring equipment. The team works deep underground in a medium-security warehouse somewhere in a city (maybe Washington DC).

The team has already discovered how to turn animals invisible. The only problem is making them visible again (a process they call reversion). They mention that the animals get progressively more savage the longer they stay invisible. But never fear, Sebastian has come up with the reversion formula, which works for their test gorilla (and allowing the special effects company to do a cool reversion animation).

Now that they have the reversion formula, Sebastian knows that the military will take over the project for the phase three. And then what? Game over for this maverick and daredevil. So he comes up with a plan: do phase three now and prove that the formula works on humans. Naturally Sebastian is the only choice for the test subject. Actually Sebastian is not a bad person. Sure, he's full of himself and has a bit of a god complex, but he seems to like his team and his work.

The problem is that once Sebastian is invisible, the reversion formula doesn't work on him. So now it's a race against time to come up with the right formula before Sebastian goes completely off the deep end. I should stop now since I've given too much away. But I did say it was a thriller.

So, as I've said, the special effects are really good. The acting is pretty good for a non-drama movie. It's a well written script and the camera work is done well too. A bit too much nudity (Rhona Mitra was the original Lara Croft in trade shows, so I guess that's something for the Tomb Raider fans).

Kevin Bacon has been in a lot of movies, Footlose probably being the first one I saw. Elizabeth Shue I only remember seeing in The Saint, although she also played Marty McFly's girlfriend in Back to the Future 2 and 3. Kim Dickens I've seen in Zero Effect as the main villain (more or less). Joey Slotnick I only remember from "The Single Guy".