Hollow Man
***
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Columbia TriStar on September 29, 2000; certificate
18; 112 minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Paul Verhoeven; produced by
Alan Marshall, Douglas Wick. Written by Andrew W. Marlowe.
Photographed by Jost Vacano; edited by Mark
Goldblatt.
CAST.....
Kevin Bacon..... Sebastian Cane
Elisabeth Shue..... Linda McKay
Josh Brolin..... Matthew Kensington
Kim Dickens..... Sarah Kennedy
Greg Grunberg..... Carter Abbey
Joey Slotnick..... Frank Chase
Mary Randle..... Janice Walton
William Devane..... Doctor Kramer
Paul Verhoeven's work as a Hollywood director has
always been slick and visually arresting. When he gets hold of strongly
structured stories like that of "Basic Instinct", he has stylistic fun with
them; it's only when he tries to overreach, as in "Showgirls" and "Starship
Troopers", that things end up in a mess and his reputation deserves blows.
"Hollow Man" is a reworking of the classic "Invisible Man"
tale that allows Verhoeven to go wild. He turns it into a slasher pic and
special effects show, but fair enough, because it's fun.
A tone of silliness is established in the opening
scenes, which introduce us to the most unrealistic group of scientists you
could imagine in 21st Century cinema. They've all got perfectly toned bodies
and movie-star haircuts, they fire clever wisecracks at each other like
professionals, their musical tastes are so hip that they include the Nine
Inch Nails. For three years the team have been working on a military-funded
project on how to make living creatures invisible. Now they seem to have
cracked it, so their leader, played by Kevin Bacon, proposes one last test:
he wants to try it on himself.
His assistants, including Elisabeth Shue and Josh
Brolin, aren't so sure that it's a good idea. Their financiers would not
approve of such risky actions. But Bacon is insistent, and eventually the
underlings cave -- they're secretly fascinated by what might happen, and
they don't want to get nagged. In a scene of spectacular special effects,
we see Bacon get injected with invisibility serum and proceed to disappear,
as hair, skin, muscle, internal organs and then bone all slowly become
transparent.
Problem is, the reversal process doesn't work.
Bacon remains invisible. It's at about this point in the movie that he gets
just a tad frustrated, turning from slightly odd into full-on psycho freak.
He escapes from the lab, terrorises people in their homes, murders old enemies
and rapes his neighbour, before returning to his colleagues and setting deadly
traps for them. Here's a film that begins with biological jargon and ends
with fireballs, blood splatters, and those nice reliable scenes in which
the villain locks the hero in a room where the temperature will become fatal
in a matter of minutes.
The special effects are obvious, but nonetheless
exciting -- showing an invisible man is not just a case of shooting empty
space, because the screenplay gives Verhoeven and his crew ingenious
opportunities to show off their visual imagination. Ever wondered how an
invisible body would appear in water, in steam, in smoke, or covered in blood?
Take a look.
I enjoyed "Hollow Man" on a B-movie level. It's
lowbrow, sick-minded and malevolent, but never pretends to be anything else,
and Verhoeven directs his scenes of violence with a gusto too many action
movies avoid. All the victims are idiotic characters written into the screenplay
for the purpose of getting fed to the meat grinder; they exist to die elaborate
deaths. I think there's a certain dark glee to be found in pictures like
this. Of course, the prospect of a killer you can't see is a genuinely scary
one, so now I'd like to see a real movie about invisibility. And no,
Paul Verhoeven should not be its director.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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