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HOLLOW MAN is grand hokum... for a while. Kevin Bacon as a scien- tist turned mad after turning invisible. The arrogant bastard *al- ready* thinks he's God, so the apparent success of the top-secret, military-funded experiment in "quantum synchronicity" sends him ov- er the edge. (Of course, it also upped the aggression of the Gor- illa they earlier tested on.) The notorious Paul Verhoven (SHOW- GIRLS, STARSHIP TROOPERS) directs and he hits nearly every mark for a solid sixty minutes. Heaped onto the extraordinary special ef- fects is jaunty humor, just-bad-enough acting, a gleeful sadistic streak, and an adequate amount of sexual danger. (Invisible Boy evolves from sexual assault to rape to murder.) Other perfectly placed pieces: a good score from Jerry Goldsmith, a way-cool lab set, and gobs of hilarious scientific mumbo-jumbo. (Numerous non- scientific exchanges are equally side-splitting. My faves: "Can we talk later, I'm trying to make love to you" and "you just lied to the f***** Pentagon!") So, for about an hour, it's summer-movie mindlessness at its near-finest. (The one persistent sore thumb is Elisabeth Shue as Bacon's character's ex-girlfriend and research partner. She goes *too* far and becomes progressively unwatchable wearing that same, blank, deer-in-the-headlights expression in ev- ery scene.) Somewhere in the second half, Verhoven's film mysteriously starts to flatten out. Talk replaces tension; violence and other immoral acts are shelved in favor of showing more (and, admittedly, amaz- ingly rendered) experiments. This is the film's first big problem, because the intentionally cheesy plot doesn't have any inherent dramatic tension. These characters aren't affecting, much less be- lievable. Their *actions* affect, however, provided they're out- rageous or atrocious enough. Like Bacon's character's grabbing a lab animal by the tail and slamming it up side the side of a cage. Verhoven, however, either cuts away too quickly (probably for MPAA reasons) or omits it altogether. Thus, there's not enough consis- tent "jolting" to keep things interesting. Jeez, whoda thunk Paul Verhoven, of all people, would make a movie that was *not* over- the-top enough? The other big problem is the script, which stops being even *remotely* believable by the end. Didn't even *one* of the test-screenings suggest retakes, at least to add dialogue ex- plaining the sudden appearance of super-healing healing powers, al- lowing the various characters to survive fire, ice, abdominal trau- ma, and exploding laboratories? Oy. See with a scientist for ad- ded effect. (Rated "R"/114 min.) Grade: C+ Copyright 2000 by Michael J. Legeros Movie Hell is a trademark of Michael J. Legeros
Originally posted to triangle.movies as
MOVIE HELL: Paul Verhoven Plays it Safe