Okay, here's the deal. Let's take a little trip back in time, shall we? Remember those great horror movies of the '30s and 40s? Special effects were limited, so the studios had to invent whatever they could to make their points. And, it was kinda cool, really. They made it so a huge gorilla could gnaw on a shipful of explorers, as well as fly-swat planes from atop the Empire State Building. They made Boris Karloff into the most fearsome looking creature ever seen on film, simply by building up his forehead with mortician's wax, adding two angle bolts, and giving him some scars (oversimplifying, I know.) Remember Bela Lugosi's Dracula? He always had flickers of light in his eyes, making his stare so riveting that women actually swooned in the theatres. How'd they do that? A guy behind the camera had two penlights, and he shined them into Bela's eyes. Tah-dah!
Now, another little trip in Mr. Peabody's Way-Back Machine. Anyone remember when Paul Verhoeven made films that would astound you? He had imagination, he had a quirky sense of humor, and he had style like few could hope to have. David Cronenberg was really the only other person that could top him...and sometimes just barely. All the way back to Soldier of Orange, you could see interesting things to come. Total Recall? Robocop? Both sci-fi hip, with a biting sense of satire. Basic Instinct? Sex and thrillers, what more could you want? Then, Showgirls hit the world, and the gagging could be heard throughout the land. Self-gratifying filmmaking, with no alternate motive than filming naked women. Then, we wait two years for Starship Troopers, and, well, on one level, there were shades of that greatness again, but it was basically a disappointment to most. Not me, but to most. So, we wait almost three years for his next film, Hollow Man.
What have we learned from our journey, chillun? Special effects have come a long way, especially in horror films and sci-fi, but -- and here's the important lesson -- they're not always the only reason to make a film. Lesson two, sadly, is that Paul Verhoeven has been reduced to churning out cookie cutter movies. Hollow Man opened this month to much hoopla, and even I proclaimed it a sleeper winner in my Summer Preview 2000. It just looked too cool for school.
Yep, I fell for the publicity. It looked cool. But, folks, behind the stellar makeup and slick production values, Hollow Man is just another standard-issue summer movie. In other words, if you're looking for a unique thriller with a sci-fi twist, look elsewhere....
Dr. Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) is a scientist working toward one goal -- achieving invisibility. After working on this formula for a while, he finally gets it right. His team, including former girlfriend Dr. Linda McKay (Elisabeth Shue), are excited. His funding fathers (pardon the pun) at The Pentagon are thrilled too, especially since they built this elaborate lab beneath the streets of Washington, D.C. and have been waiting for results forever. The catch is, though, that Caine and his crew invented the invisibility formula a while back. They have a slew of invisible animals in cages all over the lab. Problem is, they can't bring any of them back to visible status.
Caine finally figures it all out, and, after testing it on one invisible gorilla, decides to be the first human subject. Bad move, there, Sebastian. He gets invisible, but, whoops, he can't get visible again. Then, the formula awakens his evil side (of course.) He begins to misuse his "power," so to speak. First, a few practical jokes, then a little voyeurism and breaking and entering, then, he graduates to rape and murder.
I wish I could just rave about Hollow Man, I really do, but it's just not the movie it could've been. Another staggering example of wasted potential, I guess. For a while, this movie brushes the border of suspense thriller, and, to its credit, when it's good, it's good. But then, suddenly, Verhoeven and writer Andrew Marlowe spin it into some sort of weak-willed slasher movie, and it loses all its heady, edgy appeal. It's a wonder I was surprised by this turn, given that Marlowe also gave us Schwarzenegger's dismal End of Days last year. Thanks for nada, dude....
Lately, Kevin Bacon seems to be making a career of these roles, where he's only about a foot from the edge of being evil. He went from being the All-American kid in Footloose to the guy you fall back on when you need a deeply troubled soul that could kill at any moment. This character is always fun to watch when it's appropriate, but, here, it only negates the whole point of the movie. Caine is supposed to grow animalistic and evil once the formula takes hold. All well and good, but Caine, as played by Bacon, is such an insufferable, amoral, egotistical freak when the story starts, it makes it hard to buy that he wouldn't just kill someone anyway, invisible or not. I hate to quote a Blake Edwards movie, but it seems to fit: "If you want to show the evil of sin, corrupt a virgin, not a whore." (Richard Mulligan as Felix Farmer in S.O.B., if you're interested...)
The rest of the cast should've been wearing the Star Trek Red Shirt. You know the theory, right? In the original Trek series, whenever a landing party beamed down to an unexplored planet, there was always one generic crew member in a red shirt who never had a name -- there only to get killed so Kirk could clench his jaw or punch a rock. Well, in Hollow Man, we have a whole collection of red shirts: Josh Brolin, Kim Dickens, and Greg Grunberg are all there to get killed so Elisabeth Shue can turn into the Lara Croft of Invisible Town. Elisabeth Shue, Oscar® nominee for Leaving Las Vegas, beautiful charmer from Adventures in Babysitting, now, action hero? Please. Yet there she is, flamethrowers and explosions and the whole works. The last half-hour of this thing is so incredibly stupid it is laughable. Shue becomes Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, the stalked one, fighting and jumping and running, and Bacon is Invisible Jason (or Michael Myers, or Freddy, take your pick...).
The only thing pushing me to recommend Hollow Man are its special effects. I know, I hate it when a movie is made just to show off the effects, but in this case, the effects save the film. And the effects here are simply superb. The conventional blue-screen stuff is no more. Watching a vein become visible in a gorilla's arm, and trace through a body, triggering phase after phase of visibility, veins, then nerves and bones and muscles, all the way to fruition, is really a wonder to behold. When Bacon reverses the process to become invisible, it's literally like watching a body melt away one layer at a time. I thought about Michelangelo studying dead bodies, stripping away the skin so he could see how muscles moved and shaped a body. If this process can be invented for a movie, imagine what it could do for med schools and such. (But that's a rant for another time, I guess.) Safe to say, you've never seen "invisible man" movies that look this good. It just makes it all the more tragic that the rest of the film is so ... hollow.
Folks, Hollow Man is an okay film in a summer of okay films. You might actually enjoy the movie if you realize early that this is not a creepy thriller with dark tones and a wry sense of humor. In other words, a Verhoeven film. This is a pretty standard slasher movie, with production values that might keep it from fading away as fast as it probably should.
Image copyright Columbia Pictures.
|
under the knife