Hollow Man

(2000) **

Certainly it was inevitable that the advent of CGI would eventually lead to an invisible man movie with realisitic special effects. Hollow Man is that movie, and provides all kinds of eye candy on that score: the invisible man under water, covered in blood, etc. But while providing all of that good stuff, it provides precious little else.

Kevin Bacon plays the lead on a research team that is attempting to develop invisibility for the government; Elizabeth Shue and Josh Brolin (yuck) play the numbers two and three on this team. After they manage to make their invisible gorilla visible again, Bacon decides to not tell the money men at the Pentagon because he fears they'll take over the project. Taking Elizabeth Shue and Josh Brolin (yuck) into his confidence, he lies to the rest of the team and they make him invisible.

At this point the flick is already wearing pretty thin. Bacon's characterization is a total miss. He's presented as this eccentric maverick scientist with a huge ego, and it's unclear whether you're meant to like him, be impressed by him, or hate him since he's going to go nuts later and start killing people. Regardless, none of these things manage to come across. Similarly charmless are the batch of characters who make up the staff, who are meant to have a great jokey chemistry which rings totally, uh, hollow. The experience of watching this gang seems as grey as the concrete walls of their underground lab -- which, sorry to say, is where almost the entire movie takes place.

Unlike the gorilla, they can't turn Bacon visible again, and there's evidence that the formula is affecting his mind. Shue and Brolin (yuck) get cold feet about what they're up to and come clean to the Pentagon dude, but naturally Bacon is spying on them. He drowns the general in the pool, which provides the admittedly cool "invisible man in the pool" scene. When the gang get to work the next day, they find out their boss has shut them inside the lab and plans to kill them all to cover his tracks. I remember when I saw this in the theater when I realized the whole rest of the movie was going to involve yet another Alien ripoff, I felt a disappointed, sinking feeling.

It's not that the staff do particularly stupid stuff attempting to save their skins (they do), but the fact that apparently being invisible also makes you super strong. There are a few physical tussles that lend opportunities to kick him in his invisible nuts, but no, he's invisible! Sigh. At some point he's zapped with electricity, which makes his bones and muscles and veins visible, and still the movie treats him like some unstoppable monster. He's been badly burned at this point, he's not invisible anymore, why is he doing anything besides crying in the corner?

The unsatisfying answer is "it's in the script." Watching this a second time, I realized the property of invisibility was being puffed up way beyond it's actual usefulness. One night Bacon sneaks around the lab and cops a feel off of one of his female staff members while she sleeps in a chair. Asleep! Eyes closed! Makes no difference if you're invisible or not! Later he sneaks out to his apartment, and notices the sexy neighbor he keeps spying on. He gets into her apartment and spooks her, and although it isn't shown it's possible he rapes her. Again I found myself screaming "you're only invisible! If you touch somebody for more than a second, your advantage is gone!"

So yeah, not recommended, except for lots of cool invisible man effects we've all been kind of waiting for.

Josh Brolin (yuck) applies a bunch of wires 'n stuff.