Has director Paul Verhoeven ever made a movie that wasn’t slathered with the f-word? Continuing that vulgar tradition is the obscene, gory invisible-man thriller Hollow Man.
Bacon plays Sebastian Caine, an arrogant genius whose team has secretly developed a serum for invisibility. A randy voyeur to begin with, Caine becomes dangerously drunk with power after testing the drug on himself. He fondles one woman and rapes another before developing a taste for murder.
“In the beginning, you root for him,” Verhoeven says, “but as the shadows descend on his mind and he turns to evil, how long do you hold onto him? Do you ever completely reject him or does a small part of you continue to cheer him on?”
Some viewers would challenge Verhoeven’s contention that Caine is ever heroic. Even before his “transformation,” he tells raunchy jokes, brags about being God and feeds on head-banging rock music with lyrics such as, “You were meant to die.” Pretty hollow, man.
The film itself—which features remarkable visual effects—poses an intriguing moral question: “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t be seen?” But then, instead of probing the nuances of that ethical dilemma, it careens clumsily toward a slasher-flick finale as Caine traps the only people who know about his secret and begins eliminating them one by one in graphic fashion (one poor colleague gets run through from behind with a crowbar).
Hollow Man’s creators claim to be exploring human nature. No, they’re exploiting it with gee-whiz visuals that lure teens in for harsh language, brutal violence and shameless titillation.
