Hollow Man

Rating:
Summary: Verhoeven the Voyeur
Review: Alfred Hitchcock never made a movie about an invisible man, though PSYCHO came close. In that B&W classic, Norman Bates' boyish good looks and soft-spoken manner rendered clues about his mental illness invisible to first-time viewers. Norman was there, but in psychological terms you couldn't see him coming until it was too late.

In HOLLOW MAN, it seems director Paul Verhoeven has made an invisible man movie the way he imagined Hitchcock might tackle the subject (with state-of-the-art CG razzle-dazzle effects, of course). That is, he's done so up to a point. Think "voyeur" and "invisible man" and you get the drift. But this being an era of gigantic budgets and an even more gigantic male audience age 13-25, "psychological" is bound to eventually lose out to "action." Without giving anything away, I'll just say HOLLOW MAN turns into a variation of DEEP BLUE SEA.

The Hitchcockian voyeur element is layered on top of what is essentially a visually updated 1930's tale of science gone wrong, of man fooling with "things better left alone." Kevin Bacon plays Sebastian Caine, a self-obsessed genius researcher who's figured out how to make living things disappear. One of them is Elisabeth Shue's Linda Foster; she's not only a member of his research team, she's also his ex-girlfriend. His megalomania and obsession with his work made her disappear from his bed a while ago. As he now gropes for the secret of restoring his lab animals to visibility, he's also groping for a way to make her reappear in his life. And I do mean: groping.

With Sebastian Caine, "what you see is not what you get." Ultimately, the question at the core of HOLLOW MAN is whether or not a human being's shining intellectual brilliance can be enough to fill up the emptiness in his soul and make him worthy of love.

Not that there's much time to muse on existential matters. Verhoeven soups the actors up, as usual, and keeps things moving on a chilly if bright-pop-art level. The visuals are interesting even when we're between CG effects. And the visual effects are impressive, exciting. Never has a movie thought up so many clever ways for us to see someone who is invisible... smoke and mirrors figuring prominently (along with lots of fluids). Plenty of catch-your-breath scares are dished out as ghoulishly disturbing images pop up out of nowhere - literally - when we least expect them.

Despite all the technical bravado, there's something a tad unsatisfying about the way the movie finally works itself out. Bacon is solid as an actor, but here he seems to lack gravitas when it comes to the darker side of human nature. At times he seems peevish rather than scarily enraged. And the story, while delivering for the most part, doesn't allow him the moments to really analyze what his new ability is doing to his psyche. Consequently as a scientist he seems too incurious about the effect of the experiment on himself. Elisabeth Shue, a fine actress, only does what is asked of her and no more, which also contributes to a sense that - unlike the visual effects which allow us a glimpse physically inside the characters - there's been some skimping when it comes to allowing a glimpse inside each character's mind and soul.

Rating:
Summary: Most of the movie was good
Review: The first half of this movie I thought was really good, but then it took an odd twisted turn, which to me seemed very unecessary. The special effects throughout the movie were just great, particularly the parts where the gorilla was morphing back into a non-invisible form, that was really cool. The story ended up turning into a generic suspensful ending, which really wasn't all that scary, and very pridicable. It gave me the impression that the writers weren't sure how to end this movie so they just used something that has been done a million times. I would not suggest to see this unless you can look past everything and just enjoy the special effects, cause thats about the only part of this movie that I really liked.

Rating:
Summary: Hollow Man delivers us a new FEAR
Review: Kevin Bacon and his crew including Josh Brolin and Elisabeth Shue can make animals seem invisible. Bacon's character wants to try people next and he wants to be the first. All the animals are brought back to normal, but when Kevin goes HOLLOW, they can't get him back.

He goes a little crazy and starts exercising his new ability to scare, sneak a peek at a pretty lady, and like one TAGLINE says "it's amazing the things you can do when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror anymore"

This one will keep you watching!

Rating:
Summary: A First Class Thriller
Review: Hollow Man, first of all, has one of the coolest hollywood summer film premises ever. Just what would you do if you knew nobody could see you, and would never get caught? This is what the film delves into, but this time, Sebastian Cole (Kevin Bacon) is a little naughty. After him and his crew of scientests discover a drug, therfore making them invisible. With this, he realizes anything he does, he will not be punished for. At first, his deeds are simple peeping tom acts. Sneaking into womens bedroom. But then, rage starts to surface, and he targets those that he worked with, stalking them. This is a great visual feast. The speacial effects are top notch, and the fact that most the time, you cannot see Cole, it adds to the suspense amazingly. Your not going to this film for any award winning storytelling, or amazing acting. This movie accomplishes what it sets out to do, and thats scare the audience, and give them a visual display. And it does this wonderfully, a great movie.

Rating:
Summary: Disgusting
Review: That's the only word I can use to discribe this film. It started off okay, but progressed into something which can only be discribed as repulsive, with a "how many stomach turning ways can we kill off the cast" presentation, and the boundries severly pushed to how perverted they could actually make their "insane" main character, before he became vomit-inducingly disturbing. He actually made me feel physically sick, which I suppose is what they were trying to achieve, but I did not enjoy the film.
Well done to them though for their construction of Kevin Bacon's character. He was a horrid little man. And I'm not saying the film was awful. I'm giving it one star from a subjective and personal point of view. I can see why people would love it. I didn't.

Rating:
Summary: [insert "hollow" pun involving the movie here]
Review: This movie was really annoying. I mean really annoying. And much of my anger was directed at all the characters.

Kevin Bacon, after becoming invisible, goes out on his own without telling any one (he's not even supposed to do that), acts freaky around the other characters, and even kills the lab dog. And the other characters practically do NOTHING about this. In fact when someone brings up the dog, another character says, "You don't know he did that!" Yeah OK, sorry, it must've been Santa Claus...

Waiting so long, of course, only gives Kevin Bacon time to lock them all in the lab and try to kill them. Now, they have thermal goggles to help them...IF THEY WOULD USE THEM!! That's right - I hope you enjoy horror movies where you yell at the characters because this is one of them. They only use them at the beginning of the hunt, but then they suddenly forget all about them. One character, when he's being chased by Kevin Bacon, runs with them DANGLING FROM HIS WRIST! My friend and I were shouting "PUT THE DAMN GOGGLES ON YOU IDIOT!" There's another scene where Kevin Bacon is strangling his friend from a pipe above (by the way, invisibility gives him superhuman strength...) and instead of putting on the goggles and shooting him, he shoots blindly into the air. WHAT THE HECK!? Then when Kevin Bacon turns on the heat vents the character supposedly can't see with the thermal goggles...hey moron, I might be crazy but I think it's the HUMAN shaped object you're looking for.

And you know that rule of horror movies that says never seperate or leave the group for any reason? These characters not only can't understand that but they have no recollective memory regarding the consequences. At least three people get killed as a result of seperating, yet again and again characters are still running away to do some menial task.

I can see why this movie didn't do well at the box-office and why it (thankfully) has 2.5 stars at Amazon. It really isn't that great, and the special affects (which weren't all THAT great either - in the dog murder scene a folded part of his cloak looks flat on the inside) can't save it. Like I said, unless you enjoy yelling at characters for half an hour, don't try this movie.

Rating:
Summary: blood, gore and guts!!!!
Review: I just have so much fun watching the gory action parts near the end of this film! Movies with killers and a lot of blood and gore are cool. When I watch this, it sometimes makes me want to see the gory parts again and never really get tired of it! If you don't mind this stuff, YOU HAVE TO SEE ALL OF "HOLLOW MAN"!!!!

Rating:
Summary: A bit disappointing.
Review: I have to say that I've really wanted to see this film for some time now. I rented the dvd and watched the movie, and I was mostly disappointed. I knew the movie would have great special effects, so I was interested to see those. But after watching it, I have to say that I was pretty much only interested in the special effects. The story got pretty pointless in the last third of the film or so. And then ending was terrible. No explanations, no tying up loose ends. It just sort of... ends. The acting was barely decent. I've seen Kevin Bacon give much better performances. Apollo 13, for example. The violence in the film is only there for cheap thrills. It's somewhat gratuitous one might say. And the sex and nudity doesn't add much to the story either. One might also say that this is a film for guilty pleasure. A substantial amount of bloody violence, with the sideorder of T&A to go with it. If I was to rate the film on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, I would give it a 6.

Rating:
Summary: HOLLOW MOVIE
Review: Yes, the effects are brilliant; director Paul Verhoeven hasn't lost his flair for cinematic flair. Elisabeth Shue is lovely; Josh Brolin is studly; and Kevin Bacon is appropriately malevolent. The movie's focus however is so shallow and the characters at times so unlikeable, we find outselves wondering how much of ourselves to invest. HOLLOW MAN is entertaining enough, although I can't for the life of me figure out the allure of being invisible. The climactic scene is tense and well done, but the Michael Meyers when is the villain really dead schtick is still getting old.
Not a bad movie for a popcorn Friday night, but it could and should have packed more punch!