Tapehead Reviews: Hollow Man

Come Back, Verhoeven!!

Yes, I was one excited puppy, getting to see master filmmaker Paul Verhoeven's newest film a full one week before it came out. Verhoeven is one of my all-time favorite directors - from his early Danish films like The 4th Man to over-the-top classics like RoboCop, Showgirls, and Starship Troopers.

The Hollow Man stars Kevin Bacon as mad genius Sebastian Caine (wow - what a "mad genius" name!) who has developed an invisibility serum for the Pentagon. Making things invisible is easy for Caine and his crew of really good-looking scientists (led by Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin), it's the reversion from invisible to visible that proves to be difficult. Once the reversion serum has been tested on a few primate test subjects, Caine does what all self-respecting mad genius scientists do - he tries the serum out on himself. As expected, things go awry when Caine can't be returned to his normal state of existence. As the rest of his team tries to reverse the invisibility process, Caine descends into power-madness (as if being invisible isn't enough to promote anti-social behavior, this particular serum also slowly drives its subjects insane). Eventually, Caine decides that being invisible ain't so bad, after all. And there's only one way to remain invisible and keep his secret - by killing anybody who knows about his discovery.

Knowing the premise beforehand, I was very excited to see how Verhoeven handled the subject matter. Verhoeven is a master of excessive filmmaking who often pushes the limits of taste when it comes to extreme sexual situations and violence. He's also quite adept at broad, cutting social criticism. Given the material, I was expecting to be treated to an orgy of deviance that tackled the philosophical implications of invisibility. What would somebody do if they were invisible? More importantly, what would a power-mad and sociopathic scientist with a raging libido and a God complex do if he were invisible?

Unfortunately, my brain was able to conjure up much more interesting scenarios than Hollow Man delivers. Rather than having the invisible Caine rampaging through society, Hollow Man bases almost all of the film in a small science lab with a handful of victims - er, I mean scientists - whose sole purpose is to be picked off one by one in a lengthy climax reminiscent of any film in the Alien trilogy (or any of the films that subsequently ripped that franchise off).

Sure, the effects are revolutionary. They're basically the only reason to watch the film at all. While the production did use matte blocking as opposed to CGI effects (this is a point made again and again in all of the "behind-the-scenes" stories on entertainment magazines), but for all of the obscuring of the invisible Caine, it might as well've been CGI.

I'm probably judging Hollow Man by a higher standard than I would something like Gone in 60 Seconds. It's a moderately solid thriller and wouldn't have been quite so disappointing if it had come from someone other than Paul Verhoeven, a filmmaker who has, until now, always managed to create challenging and confrontational flicks (even when given weak scripts like Basic Instinct and Showgirls). The concept of Paul Verhoeven directing a sick little flick about an invisible man gone mentally and morally wacko was way more intriguiging and interesting than the final product. While there are a few Verhoeven moments - the opening sequence of a rat unknowingly going into a cage with a hungry, invisible gorilla; the insane, invisible Bacon smashing a cute little puppy dog's head in; Bacon invisibly stalking a buxom neighbor - these moments are few and far between.

I'm still a huge Verhoeven fan. I'll be first in line for whatever he makes next. Unfortunately, Hollow Man didn't give me the sci-fi/horror/Verhoeven fix I was looking for.

-- Trent Haaga

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