film: now playing

> HOLLOW MAN (2000)
Another film that had great potential but fell way short of the mark.

Directed by: Paul Verhoeven

Written by: Gary Scott Thompson, Andrew W. Marlowe

Genre: Sci-Fi / Thriller

Starring: Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin

Rating: 3 out of 10

Well, where can I start? Let's start from the beginning (usually a good place to start). The trailer for the film looked promising. A modern day "Invisible Man" who goes nuts and runs around causing trouble for everyone. Sounds like a pretty good premise doesn't it? The cast is pretty decent. Kevin Bacon has some real talent, although he has started annoying me recently with his extreme confidence in his body...more on that later. Elisabeth Shue, who was nominated for an Academy Award for a great performance in Leaving Las Vegas, has not done much worth mention recently, but she has some great energy on-screen and isn't just there for the eye-candy. Then you have the director, Paul Verhoeven, who has made some great flicks (Total Recall, Robocop, Basic Instinct) and some really, really bad ones...

I think a huge part of the problem with this film is the fact that its director is a big pervert. I mean, Paul Verhoeven has really only made (in this critic's opinion) one good movie that relies on a lot of nudity, and that was Basic Instinct. To give you an idea of what kind of caliber of film Mr. Verhoeven enjoys making, let me give you this small list: Showgirls, Starship Troopers, Diary of a Hooker, Hot Sweat ...need I list more? The whole nudity thing only detracts from Hollow Man and just seems inserted to get the T&A content up to a certain level. A beautiful woman is shown undressing and getting into a shower, Kevin Bacon sneaks into her apartment (invisible) and seemingly tosses her onto her bed, and then...and then nothing! The scene ends, with no mention of the girl ever again. So what was the point? Oh yeah...she was naked. Several scenes like this really hurt Hollow Man and its credibility.

Now onto Kevin Bacon. Anyone who has seen ANY of his last few films knows exactly what I am going to talk about here, Kevin likes to show us his bare ass, his twig, and his berries- to put it nicely. No one really knows why he likes this but from the reactions he gets in the audience when these displays arise (so to speak), they are usually greeted with laughter from both sexes. I don't know about you but I don't want to see this! And apparently I am not alone. Verhoeven takes advantage of this by showing us Kevin's parts flopping around several times while he is going through the invisibility transformation. Sure some people will say that women bare it all the time and that is normal in film, and in foreign countries maybe male frontal nudity is common. Yes, both of these elements factor in, but I am going to say my opinion here won't change...please Kevin, put it away.

If you haven't gotten the point yet, this movie is really poor. There is some horrible dialogue, some bad acting, some really big technical mistakes (how can a guy without his ears cut out of a plaster mask hear those around him?) but what really ended all hope for me was the ending sequences. The film quickly turns into the formulaic "chase the monster around, put him through more punishment than any living thing could survive, and watch him come back to life, amazingly, dozens of times before the beast finally dies". But alas, one item does not measure up with this movie and its pretty obvious, I thought. Kevin Bacon is a human being! He wouldn't be able to be standing in water and get zapped by a whole lot of electricity and live. He wouldn't live through a giant fireball of explosives either. You are supposed to be tricked into believing these things, however, because he is invisible. I guess invisible kind of sounds like invincible though...so I can see how the filmmakers and the audience may be fooled. Don't be fooled, this movie is garbage.

What I liked: Some cool effects with Bacon being invisible and the whole process of that transformation

What I didn't like: Dumb dialogue, last 15+ minutes, loose-ends. A bad, horror B-movie that tries so hard to be mainstream and fails.

(John C. Lyons, Film Critic)