Rated R for strong violence, language and some sexuality/nudity.112 Minutes
Staring: Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin, Kim Dickens, and Greg Grenburg
This is God. You are disturbing the natural order of things, and will be severely punished for all eternity. God has spoken. -Frank
Synopsis
Scientists discover how to make people invisible, but their test subject becomes an insane killer who stalks them.
Review
Didn’t someone already make a film called The Invisible Man? Wasn’t there already a Dr. Jekyl /Mr. Hyde? Hollow Man’s previews boasted a film that would implement those characteristics in a science fiction thriller that updates and combines these ideals together. Sadly when Kevin Bacon’s character goes all mad scientist Hollow Man becomes just that: hollow.
The first thirty minutes of the movie show some promise. There is the ominous feel The Abyss gives off, by the science team. You look at each of the characters knowing that some will not survive the entirety of the film, which creates a palpable tension when the characters begin to grow on you. Kevin Bacon and Elisabeth Shue especially create an enigmatic dialogue that gives their relationship a very realistic quality. The legitness of this setup predicts a suspenseful ride when things inevitably go bad.
Things do go bad, catastrophically bad. Somehow everything about the film goes wrong after Sebastian (Bacon) decides to try the experiment on himself. The Invisible Man CGI and his behavior becomes immediately cartoonish, and suddenly all of the credibility that was built up to that point is out the window, and with good reason, because the following events completely disregard what the beginning of the stories structure set up. It was almost as though two different writers and directors drew a line in the sand and each got a portion of the movie to work on.
The cartoonish CGI wasn’t the only failure, it was the motivations behind Bacon’s change in nature and character. It had no legitimacy and didn’t sell. Almost immediately he began to exhibit sociopathic behavior, and the film tried to say it didn’t happened until after an allotted time. A huge contradiction in a very poignant character development. Before the procedure it was clear Bacon’s character suffered from arrogance, but nothing psychopathic, and there wasn’t enough reasonable explanation to have made that chance so quickly.
Once things go bad to worse the film just becomes boring. Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin try to make their character’s work, and probably did the best anyone could do with what they had to work with, but they couldn’t save the downward spiral the movie took. It becomes so obnoxious and unbelievable it’s difficult not to simply turn it off.
Hollow Man was by far one of the worst movies of 2000, if not the worst. The most disenchanting aspect of the movie was the fact that it initially showed promise, but that promise made it’s ultimate failure resound even more profoundly. It was a complete disaster. I wouldn’t recommend anyone waste a minute on this film, unless you feel like getting a lobotomy first.
But Shue is really hot.
And that darned grail-shaped beacon. ,