Hollow Man [2000]

In Anticipation...

Hollow Man Poster

[Written before Robert saw the film. Want to go straight to his review? Well the link ain't invisible ]

"It's amazing the things you will do when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror...."

Brrrr!

The summer blockbuster crop is certainly starting to thin out--at least in North America ("The In Crowd" anyone?), typical of August--but that's not to say that there aren't a handful of films under the hot lamps with the potential to dethrone gems (and deserved hits) like "X Men" , "Scary Movie" and "Chicken Run". Moviegoers with a taste for the macabre (played straight) will surely be anticipating the upcoming "Silence Of The Lambs" meets "Dreamscape" chiller "The Cell" with Jennifer Lopez, but the one that's got me counting the days is the state-of-the-art invisible man shocker "Hollow Man".

Invisible Man photo

Why this one, you ask? Because not only is it directed by Paul Verhoeven (a pull-no-punches director), and stars Kevin Bacon (a pull-no-punches actor), it marks one of the few times that the power of invisibility has been played for scares, and not laughs.

Remember the original H.G. Wells story? Or the excellent 1933 film adaptation starring Claude Rains as "The Invisible Man", the demented Dr. Griffin (featuring ground-breaking special FX that are still dazzling to this day)? Director James Whale and screenwriter R.C. Sherriff, reteamed after "The Old Dark House" to translate the novel's heady ideas to the screen through a perfect mixture of terror and dark comedy. Wells' theme: that man, once his veneer of humanity is gone, once he no longer has to look at himself or be concerned with how others see him, will regress to the most uncivilized behavior. As his exterior fades, his INNER nature becomes dominant.

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Following a handful of (fairly good) sequels, the theme of invisibility became a vehicle for farce and slapstick instead of scares, witness "Abbott and Costello meet the Invisible Man", "Now You See Him, Now You Don't" (Kurt Russell as Dexter Riley!), "Invisible Mom", "The Man Who Wasn't There" (Steve Guttenberg!), "Invisible Maniac", and John Carpenter's "Memoirs Of An Invisible Man" (an underrated adaptation of the excellent novel by H.F. Saint). On television, the short-lived David McCallum miniseries "The Invisible Man" and the Ben Murphy variation "Gemini Man" reinvented Dr. Griffin as a crime-fighting superhero.

A few years ago, I read a chilling novel by Robert Cormier entitled "Fade" and thought it to be perfect material to be filmed by either David Lynch or Paul Verhoeven, given its dark themes and "Blue Velvet"/"American Beauty" peak at the dark underbelly of suburbia (in short, a teenager develops the power to become invisible, or "fade", and starts snooping around his idyllic home town, with predictably nasty results). When Verhoeven was announced to be directing his own invisibility thriller, I became ecstatic. The director of three of the finest science fiction films of the past 20 years--"Robocop", "Total Recall", and "Starship Troopers"--Verhoeven never lets special FX and pure spectacle get in the way of his exploring more weighty, and often satirical, subtext (bad reviews to the contrary). Now that I've seen the trailer, I'm convinced this one will be another in his impressive line of subversive summer spectacles--hopefully, a feast for the eyes, and the brain.

Too bad the film's screenwriter, Andrew Marlowe, has written two films I didn't like very much: "Airforce One" and "End Of Days".

Guess we'll soon see if I'm right or not. If I've been too presumptuous and leave disappointed, I may well have to "fade" away awhile myself <g>.... [Read the Review]

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