Hollow Man : L'Homme sans ombre

Sebastian Caine and his team have worked tirelessly to develop a formula that can not only turn animals invisible but also bring them back to normal at will. With Governmental pressure on them to show results, Sebastian decides he will be the first human to try the formula. He becomes invisible for a short time, however efforts to bring him back fail and he finds himself stuck. As work continues on the formula, the others in the lab begin to notice him becoming increasingly unhinged.

From director Verhoven the norm is to expect great special effects and violence. He has also been known to integrate themes and good stories into these mainly effects driven films. On this occasion however he fails to really do that and is left with a fast paced and enjoyable film that makes up in effects what it lacks in substance. The plot is pretty basic and never goes deeper – Sebastian's descent into madness is not really a descent so much as a short trip that is not really built to so much as just delivered. In it's placed though, the effects are really impressive and make the film worth seeing simply because, not only are they great, but they are also used very well in the action rather than just being the film in themselves.

The cast is OK but don't really have much to work with in terms of material. Bacon is much more interesting when not on screen than when he is. His character is too thin and he fails to portray any sort of `descent' in his character's behaviour. Shue is pretty good and seems to enjoy running round with a flamethrower. The rest of the cast are OK but basically just act as fodder in the way that a normal slasher movie will have actors to be disposed of as the film rolls.

Overall I really enjoyed this film as it is a very expensive special effects movie which relies on spectacle to keep things moving. The effects are great and take the mind away from the lack of real substance and the action at the end is very enjoyable. A really good special effects movie as long as you don't expect anything more.

This could, and should, have been an interesting look on the idea of invisibility. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, they ran out of ideas and decided to just kill everyone off and have it end in huge explosions, demonstrating a total lack of creativity. Too bad. It could have been great, were it not for the total lack of good acting, the one-dimensional characters, the corny lines and the general lack of anything worthwhile in the movie at all, other than good special effects. I feel bad for Paul Verhoeven; he used to make great movies; RoboCop, Basic Instinct & Starship Troopers were all way better than this mainstream garbage. The only good thing about this movie is the special effects, and, believe me, they are good. They are just not good enough to distract the viewer from all the negative points about the movie. It's really too bad that they couldn't make a better movie about invisibility; we've never had a truly good movie dealing with the rush of power it would be to be invisible. This movie tries, but it just falls short. All those great special effects, and no good movie to back them up. I'd only recommend this to special effect nerds, people who'll watch a movie regardless of quality just to see good special effects. I can't imagine anyone else actually enjoying this movie. I gave it a 6/10, but only because of the special effects.

Some viewers complain "this is not scary". Well, no, not in the way that a typical horror film is scary. Instead, this is more of a psychological thriller. If you remember the 1933 Universal film "The Invisible Man", you only meet the Invisible man after he has already gone insane. What happened before? This film is more about what could have happened beforehand, although the film only takes the basic idea and sets everything in present day.

Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) is a brilliant scientist who, unfortunately, is not independently wealthy. Thus he relies on the military for his funding. He manages to make a gorilla invisible then visible again with serums he has invented with said funding, but then lies to the oversight committee about his progress, although this threatens to shut his project down. He convinces two of his team members -Linda McKay (Elizabeth Shue) and Matt Kensington (Josh Brolin) - to go straight to human testing without telling the oversight committee or informing the other team members that they are going rogue. Sebastian says he will be the human test subject.

Now Sebastian is a bit of a creep to begin with . He was formerly involved with McKay, but they broke up and now - unknown to Sebastian - she is seeing Matt. But Sebastian has now become obsessed with McKay once again. So the team makes Sebastian invisible but attempts to make him visible again fail repeatedly. Sebastian goes from at first playing pranks on the team members using his power of invisibility, to growing increasingly agitated, angry, and violent as he is trapped in this invisible state and feels like a lab rat. What makes him lose it completely is when he finds out about Linda and Matt's involvement. Even before he loses it completely, though, he has been taking to the streets and doing some increasingly evil things given that he cannot be seen and therefore be held responsible.

The concluding half hour is lots of edge-of-your-seat suspense, is somewhat Die-Hardish, and then parts of it are just plain gross. The film makes good use of special effects, especially when Sebastian is transforming between being visible and invisible. Unlike today's films, though, the special effects are used to accentuate the story, not replace it. I'd highly recommend this one and do not understand the current low rating.

** out of ****

I've seen Hollow Man twice now, the first time in theaters, where I had the distinct impression that I'd seen a fast-paced thriller that was nonetheless entirely disposable and unfulfilling. Seeing the film again, I had the exact same feeling. Hollow Man is a film of great potential, packed with terrific special effects and a surprisingly engaging cast (the exceptions being Josh Brolin and Elisabeth Shue). So when the movie goes to cliche hell in its final 1/3, you'll be very disappointed even though the action is still entertaining.

Kevin Bacon stars as Sebastian Caine, a scientist working with a diverse crew in an underground laboratory on a military project. The goal: to achieve the power of invisibility, as well as the ability to return to a visible state. Caine, being the egotistical hothead that he is, performs the procedure on himself, but finds he is unable to return to his human state. With Caine growing further and further mad, the rest of the crew try to find a way to revert him back to his normal state, not knowing Caine is beginning to prefer his invisibility and will do anything to keep it.

The first half-hour of Hollow Man is the best, when we're introduced to these wow-inducing, eye-popping visual effects. This is also the point where the story holds the most potential, before devolving into B-grade land. Now, most people seem to agree that the film would have worked a lot better if it had focused on Bacon brandishing his invisibility on the outside world, and there is a ten-minute segment where he does do this, but it's also arguably the film's worst part.

The reason? That's easy, it's because he rapes Rhona Mitra. Apparently, director Paul Verhoeven seemed very satisfied with just presenting this rape, as if though to make a statement about man's human nature and what we'd do if we didn't have to face up to the consequences. That's fine and all, I'm for a little depth here and there, but it disturbs me that he doesn't address Mitra's character further. Here's a woman who's been raped by an invisible man, and we're simply supposed to accept this scene and not wonder about the effect this will have on her psychological state (think about it this way, unless the military goes public with all the invisibility stuff, there's no way she wouldn't know if she'd be attacked again). This is where the movie truly goes awry.

The last half-hour is essentially Caine going around, knocking off all the lab workers, and while it's uninspired material, it's still rather exciting to watch, if only because Verhoeven is a skilled action director who really knows how to make us squirm and cringe at the sight of blood and guts. But by the time it's all over, though I found myself mildly entertained, there was still a bad taste in my mouth from the filmmakers' poor decision-making and routine route they chose for the film.

Hollow Man boasts some pretty impressive visual effects and does have an intriguing story. Kevin Bacon plays Sebastion Caine, an arrogant scientist who develops a serum for invisibility. Withholding information from his superiors, Caine tests his serum on himself and undergoes a transformation that is quite visually arresting. It's like an anatomy book come to life. But while Caine's transformation and subsequent experiments with his new found power prove interesting, the movie fails to capture what it feels like to truly be invisible. Caine says to his colleagues, "You have know idea how much fun this is." In truth, we don't. We see Caine slowly going mad and trapping his fellow scientists in the lab when they threaten to go public. But, we don't get any sense of power from Caine. True he does venture out into public and enters the apartment of his very fetching neighbor, but that's about all the real world we see with Caine. It would've been interesting to see Caine in the real world, and what would've been done to capture him. Instead, we have Bacon, Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin and a few others mixing it up in a hidden lab somewhere in D.C. While the actors try to make the best with what they have, Paul Verhoeven tries to goose us a little. He succeeds in a few instances, and he does manage to hold your attention for a while, but the ending is the weakest link in the movie. Had there been a stronger ending, the movie would've been a little better. As it is now, it's a good exercise in visual effects territory, but there are so many other possibilities that lay with the story of an invisible human being.