HOLLOW MAN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Really disappointing is this films
complete failure of originality and imagination.
Now that filmmakers have visual special effects
sufficient to do an invisible man story on the
screen, they no longer have writers who can
think of intriguing things to do with the idea.
Some incredible special effects cannot save a
pedestrian and overly familiar plot. Rating: 3
(0 to 10), -1 (-4 to +4)
If Hollywood's makers of summer films can be said to show any creativity and imagination--admittedly a difficult point of view to defend--it is in how they manage to takes such a variety of film premises and turn them into standard borrowed endings. It is truly remarkable how many different films build to cliches like the sympathetic underdogs winning the big game. The other standard ending, which if you think about it is only a variation on the first one, is the sympathetic heroes in a confined space facing and defeating something that wants to kill, perhaps already has, but cannot itself be killed. We saw it in IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE, ALIEN, ALIENS, HALLOWEEN, and who knows how many more films. Of the eight films playing currently at my local multiplex three have unkillable killer endings. One of them is HOLLOW MAN which begins as a revisiting of concepts from H. G. Wells's THE INVISIBLE MAN but in the end is just two people being chased by a perfectly visible monster and killing him several times only to have him keep on coming. The once-respectable Paul Verhoeven should have rejected the script as inferior, but instead let it be just another step in his decline. Besides its striking lack of originality HOLLOW MAN wastes some of the most interesting convention of the Invisible Man.
Most invisible man films are all based on H. G. Wells's novel THE INVISIBLE MAN. That novel is itself a reframing of the story of Gyges, which today we remember best through its reference in Plato's REPUBLIC. Gyges, a shepherd who comes into possession of a ring of invisibility, uses it unscrupulously to make himself king. In the dialog of THE REPUBLIC Glaucon suggests that god-like power, like that of Gyges, of necessity corrupts. These stories look at the power an invisible man has and frequently examine whether that power really does necessarily corrupt the person who has that power. One important aspect is that he can be virtually anywhere unseen, using his power in clever ways. But since this film places the invisible man in an inescapable deep lab complex (with the exception of one short sequence) most of the imaginative power of the concept is thrown away. There is just too much haste to get to the secure territory of cliches and ultra-familiar plotting.
Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) heads up a super secret government project. With his ingenious process he already can make animals invisible. Ironically his most difficult problem is making them visible again. (Perhaps this is also an idea borrowed from Wells. As the novel begins Griffin has already made himself invisible and struggles to find the way back to visibility. The old Universal Invisible Man series stretches this quest over multiple films.) For Sebastian's discoveries he expects to win a Nobel Prize. (Why does every cinematic mad scientist who can grow a three-foot-long blood-sucking garden slug think that is what they give Nobel prizes for?) The military is ready to cut his funding for lack of usable results so Sebastian decides to experiment on himself. He already is a bit of a jerk, will the power that invisibility gives him exaggerate his character flaws into madness? Was this plot built from a kit or what?
This is a film that could have risen to the level of mediocre, but blows it in the cliched final reel. Sure, there is a tradition in films that the hero and the villain survive hazards and situations that really should have killed them. The final sequences of this film go beyond any reasonable suspension of disbelief. The writers confuse the concepts of "invisible" and "invincible." Sebastian goes through a gauntlet that should have reduced him to the consistency of tapioca pudding, made even worse by him running around without the protection of clothing, but he keeps on fighting. The heroes themselves survive treatment only a little gentler.
The script by Andrew W. Marlowe seems oblivious to the most basic technical issues about invisibility. H. G. Wells gave more thought to the technical questions of invisibility than went into this film. This film uses Star-Trek-style double-talk physics to explain the invisibility in the first place, something like a "quantum phase shift," but then apparently is going to use chemical and biological means to bring the guy back. At one point Sebastian eats a Twinkie and it is immediately invisible. Wells knew better. Sebastian is totally invisible and yet his eyes are apparently still focusing. Again Wells knew better. Even the opportunities for prurient voyeurism, while absent from Wells, have been handled considerably better elsewhere. Jerry Goldsmith probably saw little effort on the part of the filmmakers to exercise much imagination and followed suit with what is one of his least memorable scores.
Not to be totally negative and to give the film its due, the special effects are uniformly dazzling. The original series used a few simple effects that were not entirely convincing. Most notably I believe they filmed in a black room an actor with clothing over a black velvet suit that totally covered him. Only the clothing shows and it gives them an image they could lay on top of another shot. The computer has changed a very great deal. The visuals here are flawless and delightful. Also as is ironically if frequently the case, even a very bad horror film can have a very good first scene. (MARS ATTACKS is a prime example. Most of what is good in that film is in the pre-credit sequence.) The horror potential of concept of an invisible predator has never been captured on film so well as in the first scene of HOLLOW MAN. That makes it all the more disappointing how the filmmakers so badly blew the rest of the film.
For the same budget this film could have brought the invisible man film into the modern age. Instead if will hopefully quickly sink from sight. I rate this a 3 on the 0 to 10 scale and a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 2000 Mark R. Leeper
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