Hollow Man Directed by: Paul Verhoezen The special effects are top-notch in Hollow Man, but should have been used in educational videos for high school biology students. The visuals are the only thing that kept me interested, because the rest of the film is, well, hollow. Without the special effects, this film's only real competition would be the remake of The Invisible Man with Chevy Chase. One ticket for Coyote Ugly II please. The pitch to get this film made most likely sounded very intriguing. A top secret government and military project is taking place in an underground bunker that can only be accessed by the scientists working on it by voice-coded elevators. Not even the generals in charge of the operation are allowed in the underground crackpot scientist lab headed by Sebastian Cole (Kevin Bacon). Cole, along with several other scientists, have developed a process called Quantum Reversion. This process allows life forms to become invisible. The only glitch is finding the right chemicals to let them come back to their fleshy forms. This is where the film opens. Was that 45 words or less? Sebastian finally cracks the reversion process, and they try it out on an ape named Isabelle (Ape) who is already invisible in a kennel with invisible dogs and monkeys. The reversion brings Isabelle back to her hairy form, so the scientists decide what the heck, lets get naked and invisible!! Well, at least Kevin Bacon does. Sebastian goes invisible for a few days and then when they try to bring him back to the flesh, guess what? No can do. Sebastian gets frustrated and leaves the underground bunker to experiment with his invisibility. Here's the part of the movie that I was ticked off the most about. Sebastian, who has a very dirty mind, is out in the public invisible. The possibilities are endless. Just think about it: you are invisible, you have the mind of a dirty old man, and you live in a big city. So what does Sebastian do? He scares a couple of little kids and a homeless guy, breaks a window and sneaks into a woman's apartment and makes her scream. Jason does that in every Friday the 13th film, and even then it's not scary. A majority of Hollow Man centers on the frayed relationship between Sebastian and another scientist in the lab, Linda (Elizabeth Shue). Sebastian and Linda used to date, but now they don't because according to Linda, he was never really there when he actually was. Oh, that scientist humor!! Linda is a bed buddy with one of the other scientists, Matthew (Josh Brolin), and the invisible version of Sebastian doesn't like that. In fact, he blows up the entire underground lab because he's jealous, and because Linda and Matthew told the military that Sebastian is invisible. Now doesn't this make Sebastian sound like a spoiled little brat? The last 30 minutes or so of the film is Sebastian acting out his aggression by killing the majority of the scientists and tossing vials of explosive liquids around. We already know who survives before the ending comes around, so there is no surprise factor. Sebastian makes a comment early in Hollow Man that "I am God." Right before Linda torches the invisible Sebastian with fire, she says, "You think you're God, here's God." God is fire and death. Hmmm, interesting. Technology when mixed with science fiction in the right combinations
makes for interesting films. Paul Verhoeven, who himself has directed some
fantastic science fiction films such as Total Recall and Robocop,
has failed to give the viewer anything fresh besides computer generated
skeletons with veins attached. When Sebastian first becomes invisible, Matthew
says "It's a Brave New World." There certainly isn't anything
Brave or New in Hollow Man. |
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