Hollow Man

Is Kevin Bacon's Porsche-driving research scientist and his team of hipster dufus colleagues meant to be taken seriously? Obviously not. There are clearly viewing parameters applicable when viewing this kind of B grade sci-fi twaddle and any approximation to realism is not one of them.

Paul Verhoeven tarts up his silly story about a "genius" (Bacon) who finds a way of making himself invisible with the usual experiment-gone-wrong consequences with flashily impressive special effects but that doesn't make his film any better. From the opening scene with Bacon solving weighty scientific problems with a few key strokes on his computer simulation this is stuff such as one would believe was conceived of by a neither intelligent nor imaginative teenage boy (who is also probably the only audience for it). There's plenty of technobabble, wooden acting by the main supports, Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin and clichéd dialogue and directing, all of which wouldn't be so bad if Verhoeven didn't drag us through a mire of inane sexist violence.

 FYI:  Verhoeven's film owes much to James Whale's The Invisible Man (1933) which was based on a story by H.G.Wells, although, unsurprisingly neither are credited here.

 

Want something different?