Hollow Man
USA/Germany 2000
Reviewed by David Thompson
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Working in a secret underground laboratory funded by the Pentagon in Washington DC, scientist Sebastian Caine has created a serum that can make living creatures invisible. With the aid of his team, which includes his former lover Linda McKay, he experiments on animals, but so far is unable to bring them back from a state of invisibility. He finally works out a reversal formula, which he successfully tests on a gorilla. When he reports to his boss at the Pentagon, Dr Kramer, Caine lies about this breakthrough, fearing his funds will be cut off. He returns to his team, declaring they have approval to move on to Phase Three, in which he himself will be given the serum.
Caine is made invisible, but the reversal procedure proves a failure. His irresponsible nature comes to the fore, and he escapes to his apartment, and then gains access to the flat of a neighbour, whom he assaults. Tampering with a video camera to convince his team he is still in the laboratory, Caine then spies on McKay, discovering that her new lover is a senior member of his team, Matthew Kensington. McKay finds out about Caine's deception, and she and Kensington visit Dr Kramer to reveal what has happened. Caine then kills Dr Kramer before he can speak to anybody. Returning to the laboratory, Caine begins to murder his team one by one and plants a time bomb. McKay manages to avoid his traps and, believing she has killed Caine with jets of fire, escapes to the lift shaft with a wounded Kensington. Caine reappears, and just as he demands a final kiss from her, she manages to send him plunging to his death.
Review
With Hollow Man director Paul Verhoeven has delivered exactly the kind of special-effects movie that Hollywood wants - violent, action-driven, but with just enough restraint in the sexual domain to please the MPAA ratings board. After the relative box-office failures of Showgirls and Starship Troopers, Hollow Man finds the director living up to his reputation of being a superior craftsman, while eradicating the confrontational elements of his previous films. Verhoeven has invoked Plato here in suggesting that invisibility would cause a man to abuse power, but though there are a few instances of the camera as sexual voyeur, the 'bad boy' elements of his make-up are rarely apparent. Just as the invisible scientist Caine creeps up on his half-naked neighbour, the scene cuts away, leaving us to imagine the worst. Once Verhoeven would have shown the consequences of Caine's actions, and then led us to question who is morally more questionable: the film-maker or the audience? In Hollow Man the issue is simply avoided.
Much of the blame for the relative blandness of Hollow Man must be placed on Andrew Marlowe's script. Marlowe (End of Days) fails to provide either characters or a plot with any shading or surprises. Caine moves from an arrogant scientist to a psychotic killer consumed with sexual jealousy without much of a gear shift. In James Whale's classic 1933 film version of H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man, the scientist-hero becomes mad as a side effect of the drugs he's been trying out. He also has insane plans for world domination, and given Hollow Man's Washington setting, Marlowe seems to be missing a trick: why doesn't Caine use his invisibility to infiltrate the Pentagon or even spy on the president, a rich territory for voyeuristic gags, surely?
Instead, the final act of Hollow Man becomes a claustrophobic battle between Caine's bland colleagues and a malevolent 'thing' in their midst. Caine's main adversary, McKay, comes across as little more than an enterprising head girl, while the banter between the embattled scientists is in need of some Hawksian verve, particularly given their mantra-like response to any situation: "Oh, shit."
On the positive side, Hollow Man demonstrates that Verhoeven remains masterful at integrating state-of-the-art special effects into a rigorous, Hitchcockian mise en scène. Working with his regular collaborators, the director gives the visuals a hard, metallic texture. He heightens human flesh tones to give his actors a waxy gloss, so that when their bodies are penetrated, the impact of the wounds is intensified. Verhoeven has always had a brutalist attitude to the human form, and it is the scenes of bodily transformation that have the greatest intensity here. The reduction of the body of a man to bone, muscular tissue and blood vessels as it shifts in and out of invisibility is strikingly beautiful, like a series of animated Vesalius drawings. The disappointment of Hollow Man is that this is the only real depth the film achieves.
Credits
- Director
- Paul Verhoeven
- Producers
- Douglas Wick
- Alan Marshall
- Screenplay
- Andrew W. Marlowe
- Story
- Gary Scott Thompson
- Andrew W. Marlowe
- Director of Photography
- Jost Vacano
- Editor
- Mark Goldblatt
- Production Designer
- Allan Cameron
- Music/Music Conductor
- Jerry Goldsmith
- ©Global Entertainment Productions GmbH & Co. Movie KG.
- Production Company
- Columbia Pictures presents a Douglas Wick production
- Executive Producer
- Marion Rosenberg
- Co-producer
- Stacy Lumbrezer
- Associate Producer
- Kenneth Silverstein
- Production Co-ordinators
- Mitchell Bell
- Washington DC:
- Katherine Dorrer
- Unit Production Manager
- Robert Latham Brown
- Location Manager
- William Bowling
- 2nd Unit Director
- Scott E. Anderson
- Assistant Directors
- Louis D'Esposito
- Michael Viglietta
- Shari Hanger
- 2nd Unit:
- Thomy Harper
- Script Supervisors
- Haley McLane
- 2nd Unit:
- Dea Cantú
- Casting
- Howard Feuer
- ADR Group Voice:
- The Loop Troop
- 2nd Unit Director of Photography
- Anette Haellmigk
- Camera Operators
- Tommy Yatsko
- Motion Control:
- Eric Pascarelli
- 2nd Unit:
- Phillip Carr-Forster
- Steadicam Operator
- Mark Emery Moore
- Senior Visual Effects
- Supervisor:
- Scott E. Anderson
- Producer:
- Susan MacLeod
- Visual Effects
- Supervisor:
- Craig Hayes
- Editor:
- Jody Rogers
- Special Visual Effects
- Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc
- Tippett Studio
- Amalgamated Dynamics Inc.
- Computer Graphics Imagery/Video Display
- Banned From The Ranch Entertainment
- Additional Visual Effects
- Rhythm and Hues Studios, Inc.
- Full Body Scanning
- Cyber F/X Inc
- Hydrodynamic Motion Control
- General Lift
- Joe Lewis
- Travelling Matte Technology
- Composite Components Company
- Special Effects
- Stan Parks
- 2nd Unit Supervisor:
- Richard Stutsman
- Set Supervisor:
- William Aldridge
- Shop Supervisor:
- Hans Metz
- Co-ordinator:
- Salvy Maleki
- Technicians:
- Larz Anderson
- Larry Deunger
- Johnny Fontana
- Mike Paris
- Justin Parks
- Bruce Richter
- David Rohrer
- Paul Sabourin
- Hydraulic Design Supervisor
- Mark Yuricich
- Supervising Puppeteer
- Alec Gillis
- Lead Puppeteer
- Yuri Everson
- Puppeteers
- Dave Penikas
- Steve Frakes
- Christine Papalexis
- Alison Mork
- Tony Matijevich
- Kevin McTurk
- Andy Schoneberg
- Garth Winkless
- John Lundberg
- Kristin Charney
- Greg Manion
- Associate Film Editor
- Ian Slater
- Art Director
- Dale Allan Pelton
- Set Designer
- Daniel R. Jennings
- Set Decorator
- John M. Dwyer
- Storyboard Artist
- Giacomo Ghiazza
- Costume Designer
- Ellen Mirojnick
- Costume Supervisor
- James Tyson
- Make-up Supervisor
- Whitney L. James
- Make-up
- Luisa Abel
- Appliance Make-up
- Barry R. Koper
- Make-up Effects Design/Creations
- Alec Gillis
- Tom Woodruff Jr
- Hair Supervisor
- Martin Samuel
- Hair
- D.J. Plumb
- Rita Troy
- Main Titles Design
- The Picture Mill
- Orchestrations
- Alexander Courage
- Music Editors
- Kenny Hall
- Darrell Hall
- Music Recordist/Mixer
- Bruce Botnick
- Synthesizer Programmer
- Nick Vidar
- Soundtrack
- "Power Struggle" - Sunna; "Hotels" - Juliana Hatfield; "Jaguar" - Boss Hog; "Charlie Big Potato" - Skunk Anansie
- Sound Mixer
- Joseph Geisinger
- Re-recording Mixers
- Michael Minkler
- Gary Gegan
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Scott A. Hecker
- Supervising Dialogue Editors
- Michael J. Benavente
- Hugo Weng
- Sound Effects Editors
- Eric A. Norris
- Brian Thomas Nist
- Jason W. Jennings
- Kenneth L. Johnson
- Gary L. Krause
- Bradley C. Katona
- Special Sound Effects
- John Fasal
- ADR
- Mixer:
- Charleen Richards
- Supervising Editor:
- Susan Dudeck
- Editor:
- Linda Folk
- Foley
- Mixer:
- Richard Duarte
- Editors:
- Christopher Flick
- Mark Papas
- Gary Hecker
- Matt Dettmann
- Technical Adviser
- Donna Cline
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Gary Combs
- Gil Combs
- Animal Handlers
- Shelley Davis
- Elizabeth McMullen
- DeAnn Zarkowski
- Cast
- Elisabeth Shue
- Linda McKay
- Kevin Bacon
- Sebastian Caine
- Josh Brolin
- Matthew Kensington
- Kim Dickens
- Sarah Kennedy
- Greg Grunberg
- Carter Abbey
- Joey Slotnick
- Frank Chase
- Mary Randle
- Janice Walton
- William Devane
- Doctor Kramer
- Rhona Mitra
- Sebastian's neighbour
- Pablo Espinosa
- warehouse guard
- Margot Rose
- Mrs Kramer
- Jimmie F. Skaggs
- wino
- Jeffrey George Scaperotta
- boy in car
- Sarah Bowles
- girl in car
- Kelli Scott
- mom
- Steve Altes
- dad
- J. Patrick McCormack
- General Caster
- Darius A. Sultan
- gate guard
- Tom Woodruff Jr
- Isabelle the gorilla
- David Vogt
- helicopter pilot
- Gary Hecker
- gorilla vocals
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Columbia Tristar Films (UK)
- 10,116 feet
- 112 minutes 24 seconds
- Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS-8
- Colour by
- DeLuxe