Hollow Man
Cast
Elisabeth Shue as Linda McKay
Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Caine
Josh Brolin as Matthew Kensington
Kim Dickens as Sarah Kennedy
Greg Grunberg as Carter Abbey
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Rater #2 has description and review.
Rater #1
Has not seen movie.
Rater #2
5/10. As you can see from the very clever tagline, Hollow Man is about
thinking you're alone. But you should think again. Evidentally, all
the words I've used so far are more advanced than the scriptwriters'
vocabulary.
Kevin Bacon plays Sebastian Caine, an egotistical but brilliant
scientist. The script makes us know that he's an egomanic early on,
but when Bacon is invisible, they seem to make us forget that. In
fact, he's so self-oriented that he names all of his medicines after
himself. OK, we get it! Anyway, he and his team are working on making
objects invisible. Why not? So after not getting approval from the
government, Sebastian goes ahead and tests it out on himself.
But, alas, that wouldn't be much of a movie. Sebastian's team, which
includes Linda (Elisabeth Shue) who is Sebastian's former lover,
Matthew (Josh Brolin), Linda's secret lover, and Sarah (Kim Dickens),
who happens to be a vet, can't turn him back to his visible form.
And, of course, Sebastian goes mad.
Special effects are the film's saving grace. We see all of Bacon's
transformations into visible beings and invisible beings, and,
despite being somewhat gruesome, were very intense and actually
looked real (except I don't really know what everything in the body
look like). When Bacon had his facemask on, I totally believed that
it was Bacon who was invisible. The script didn't do that. The
special FX did.
On the other hand, the script, as I've said before, isn't exactly on
a Shakespearean level. It's not even on a Sesame Street level. It's
something that director Paul Verhoeven realized that he needed to
have in order to make a movie so called it together at the last
minute. You can tell how deep it is when all the dialogue is what's
happening. "It's coming down!" "Keep climbing!" And the script had a
lot of medical/scientific mumbo-jumbo. Don't expect us to know what
you're talking about. Round to the lowest common demonator.
You could call this a "popcorn movie", except there isn't a lot of
action or exciting scenes it it. In fact, I wasn't thrilled at all. I
was entertained, but not tense. The only action was at the tacked-on
end that seemed too abrupt. If there had been a steady amount of
action all throughout, it would have been easier to swallow.
The movie didn't know where to go. It didn't hold onto one plot.
Hollow Man tried to appeal to many demographs: thrill-seekers, action
afficondos, romantics, 30-year-old dateless men. It, however, didn't
really let us explore on those. And the characters, although we know
some about Sebastian, we know diddly-squat about the other half-dozen
supporting characters, who just seem to be there when the "script"
called for it.
Well, there you go. Hollow Man is an entertaining but thrill-less
movie with special effects out the wazoo but nothing underneath the
surface (hence the name Hollow Man?)
Rater #3
Has Not Seen Movie.
Rater #4
Has Not Seen Movie.
Rated R for strong violence, gore, insides of bodies, language and
some nudity.
Running time: 112 minutes
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