Hollow Man II

(2006) *1/2

If you think the big question here is "they made a Hollow Man Two?" I can actually go you one better: what's more boring than watching two invisible men fight?

This straight-to-video release was the reason I watched Hollow Man in the first place, mostly because I like Christian Slater and Peter Facinelli, both of whom are in this. The premise is decent enough: years after the Kevin Bacon experiment tanked, the military teamed up with big biz to do it again. This time they invisibilized volunteer soldier Christian Slater, but sure enough he goes crazy from the bad medicine and starts killing people. Eventually we find out it's been quite a few random murders, but by that time I was way past caring.

This actually started out mildly promising, since the idea of a highly-trained soldier being invisible actually gets around my main gripe from the first movie, that being invisible doesn't grant you any other powers. And the first victim is a guy at a big fancy party, who gets pushed around the room so that everyone thinks he's embarrasingly drunk. That makes sense.

This whisp of originality is quickly overwhelmed by a procession of predictable cliches. Slater is after the one pretty woman scientist who can concoct the drugs to keep him physically stabilized. Enter Peter Facinelli as Mr. Good Everycop assigned to protect her with the help of his partner. He sits out in the car while the partner's in the house, and they use their radios to exchange banter that as good as hangs a "kill me" sign around the nice lady cop's neck. After the invisible culprit's bonked the partner with a lamp, out come the army dudes and black helicopters, as the evil military industrial complex was using the biologist as bait. Dr. Bait is meant to go into police custody, but Facinelli springs her so they can go solve the case on their own. Whatever.

It's all feels very made-for-TV, with the cop managing to stay ahead of their trackers enough for the bigwigs in suits to say the Bourne line: "he's just one guy, how is he doing this?" Eventually Slater gives his ex-bosses what for, of course. Ten mintues from the end Facinelli turns himself invisible too, and we get the fight in the rain you see above (can you make them out? No? Sorry.)

Boring. Dumb. Lame. Not worth another keystroke.