Hollow Man --Superbit

Starring: Elisabeth Shue, Kevin Bacon Director: Paul Verhoeven Original UK Premiere: 2000 Dvd Release: 14th October, 2002 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: Dutch, English, Hindi

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Hollow Man is a science fiction thriller film starring Kevin Bacon, Elizabeth Shue & Josh Brolin & directed by Paul Verhoeven. Bacon plays Sebastian Caine, a brilliant but egotistical & arrogant scientist who, with a few othersare working on an invisibility serum for the US military. The serum works on animal subjects, but Caine lies to the oversight committee & decides to test the serum on himself. At the first, the procedure is a success, but when he is unable to return to visibility, Caine becomes increasingly unhinged & deranged & endangers the lives of his co-workers, ultimately leading to a tense & lethal game of cat-and-mouse.

This is a reasonably entertaining movie with stunning visual effects. It is really a modern day version of a mad scientist movie.

The plot is a little thin. It basically revolves around Kevin Bacons character, Dr. Sebastian Caine, an egotistical, self absorbed scientific genius who, during the course of his work for the Department of Defense, has managed to render animals to an invisible state & return them to visibility. He does not reveal to the Department of Defense, his financial benefactor, that his work has succeeded. Instead, he ignores protocols & decides that the time has come to take his experimentation to the next level & try it on a human being, himself.

To make a long story short, Caine goes ahead with the human experimentation, only to find that he is unable to replicate the success he had with the laboratory animals & render himself visible again, once rendered invisible. He begins to deteriorate mentally, sinking into an inexplicable & bizarre maniacal state until he is totally out of control.

Moreover, Caine, the acknowledged genius of a scientific assemblage, is aware that he is losing it. Yet, he does nothing to assist in the discovery of what went wrong with the experiment & what could be done to correct the problem. He, instead, inexplicably leaves the solution to the self-acknowledged lesser capabilities of his colleagues. This simply does not compute with the films portrayal of Caines inherent character.

Moreover, there is also virtually no explanation for Bacons rapid descent into apparent madness, where his antics range from naughty & not nice to totally evil & depraved. This is a big hole in the story, & Bacons character reflects this omission, as the viewer is not moved to feel any compassion for him. The character of Caine is, in essence, just a mechanism used to facilitate a lot of action scenes with great special effects.

Therein lies the rub. Caine, as a character, has no redeeming value or quality. In other words he is no Jekyll & Hyde. He is just Hyde. This is why, I believe the movie has been so panned by most viewers, even though they may not have articulated it as such.

With such great visual effects, I am also surprised that more attention was not paid to production details. A latex mask created for Caine does not appear to have breathing holes for the nostrils. The film also occasionally segues into the absurd. In one scene, the ease with which plastic bags of blood were ripped open with one characters bare hands defied reality. I have a harder time ripping open a plastic bag of carrots. In another scene, Caines character is torched with a flame thrower over, & over, & over again. Yet, like the energizer bunny, he keeps on going. This was simply not believable. The film is fraught with a number of moments of implausibility.

If you are willing to suspend belief & just sit back & accept the movie at face value, however, one should still be able to reasonably enjoy this movie, as it does, despite the plot holes, have its moments, & the visual effects are dazzling.

Elisabeth Shue is an American film actress. Shue was born into a well-heeled & well-educated family & grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey. Her parents divorced while she was in the fourth grade. Her father, who was active in Republican politics, once unsuccessfully ran for the US Senate in New Jersey. Shue later attended Wellesley College & acted in television commercials for extra spending money. Her brother is Melrose Place actor Andrew Shue. Another brother William, died from a freak accident while on family vacation. Elisabeth watched helplessly. In 1984, she co-starred in The Karate Kid as the onscreen girlfriend of Ralph Macchio & a role as the teenage daughter of a military family in the short-lived series, Call to Glory. She continued her acting work with Adventures in Babysitting, Cocktail, Soapdish & The Marrying Man, as well as playing the role of Jennifer Parker in the two Back to the Future sequels. Trying to shed her girl-next-door image, Elisabeth took a chance on a low-budget, high-risk project called Leaving Las Vegas. Posters Of Elisabeth Shue

Editors Choice: Hollow Man, Leaving Las Vegas, Molly, The Saint, Adventures In Babysitting, View DVDology

Kevin Bacon is an American film actor who has starred in Stir of Echoes, Wild Things, JFK & Apollo 13, among others. He has been married to actress Kyra Sedgwick since 1988. 1987  . Planes, Trains & Automobiles. 1983 . Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. Kevin Bacon also appeared in the soap operas Guiding Light & Search for Tomorrow. There is a game known as the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which players are challenged to link any actor to Kevin Bacon through roles in movies common to both. The number of such links that must be followed between an actor & Kevin Bacon is known as that actors Bacon number. An anatomically-correct computer model of Kevin Bacons entire body was made for the movie Hollow Man. This model was later donated to scientists. Posters Of Kevin Bacon

Editors Choice: Hollow Man, Stir Of Echoes, The Woodsman, Mystic River, Wild Things, Apollo 13, Sleepers, Telling Lies In America, View DVDology

Paul Verhoeven is a famous Dutch -born film director best known for his extremely violent science fiction films. He was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He graduated from the University of Leiden with a double in mathematics & physics. He joined the Dutch navy & it was in that service that he gained his first exposure to film, making documentaries. He left the navy & took his skills into Dutch television. His first major success was the 1969 Floris television series, starring Rutger Hauer. His first film was released in 1971, Wat Zien Ik? was not especially well received. But his first national success did not come until 1973 with Turks Fruit, featuring Hauer. He built on his reputation & following minor international successes, such as the Golden Globe winning Soldaat van Oranje, he moved to the USA. Crossing the Atlantic may also have been the result of resentment Verhoeven felt towards the Dutch film society. His work was seen as too commercial & it didnt get the recognition it deserved. Posters Of Starship Troopers

Editors Choice: Starship Troopers, Hollow Man, Showgirls, Basic Instinct, Total Recall, Robocop, Schwarzenegger, The Fourth Man, View DVDology

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