Product Details

• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: NTSC
• Original language: English, Hungarian
• Subtitled in: English, Hindi, Swedish, Turkish, Danish, Hungarian, Polish, Icelandic, Dutch, Arabic, Finnish, Czech, Greek
• Running time: 112 minutes

Amazon.com
In Paul Verhoeven's appropriately shallow Hollow Man, Kevin Bacon plays a bad-boy egotistical scientist who heads up a double-secret government team experimenting with turning life-forms invisible. How do we know he's a bad boy? Because he (a) wears a leather overcoat, (b) compares himself to God, (c) drives a sports car, and (d) spies on his comely next-door neighbor while eating Twinkies. Sadly, this is the most character development anyone gets in this undernourished action/sci-fi thriller, which boasts some amazing special effects and some amazingly ridiculous plot twists. After experimenting rather ruthlessly on a menagerie of lab animals, Bacon finally cracks the code that will turn the invisible gorillas, dogs, and so on, back into their visible forms. Does it work on humans? Faster than you can say "six degrees," Mr. Bacon appoints himself human guinea pig, strapping down for an injection of fluorescent-colored serum. Thanks to some phenomenal, seamless and Oscar-worthy computer effects, Bacon is indeed rendered invisible, organ by organ, vein by vein. And what's the first thing you'd do if you were invisible? Why, spy on your female coworkers in the bathroom and molest your comely next-door neighbor, of course! Soon, Bacon is thoroughly psychotic, and it's up to Elisabeth Shue (Bacon's coworker and ex-girlfriend) and hunky Josh Brolin (her current snuggle bunny) to defeat the invisible man, who's picking off the science team one by one. You'd think this would be a prime opportunity for copious amounts of cheesy sex and aggressive violence--which Verhoeven served up so well and so exuberantly in Starship Troopers and Basic Instinct--but if anything, the director seems to tone down the proceedings, and really, who wants a muted Paul Verhoeven movie? Shue (who got top billing and a bad haircut to boot) and Brolin (who, yes, does take off his shirt at least once) generate little heat, and while Bacon does give an effective, primarily voice-oriented performance, his character is so underdeveloped that, well, you can see right through him. --Mark Englehart

Customer Reviews

Don't buy this thing
So the special effects were pretty good. Who cares? Go hang out in a morgue or sit in on an anatomy class and see the real thing. The plot of this sad effort is moronic--why any of the characters do what they do is inexplicable, and why they don't use their heads and *think* about what to do is ONLY because the writers and director didn't CARE enough to come up with a plot. I mean, seriously, you are smart enough to be working on a top secret research project with major government funds, but when your boss turns into an invisible homicidal maniac, it doesn't occur to you to always wear the special glasses which allow you to see him? This kind of inanity pervades the movie. And why this bothered me so much, I'm not quite sure--but when they make a latex mask for Kevin Bacon, they don't bother to cut holes in it for his nostrils! If you've ever worn a diving mask, you'd know how humid and uncomfortable that would be within seconds. In fact, I've had my face cast, and they put straws in my nose so that I could BREATHE DURING THE PROCEDURE! So there were holes in the mask from the very beginning. It's this carelessness that drives me to distraction--if you are going to put millions of dollars into a film, why not really THINK about it, instead of insulting our intelligence? Believe me, it is not worth missing 112 minutes of your life, and whatever this costs you financially, to see the few minutes of special effects that are the only redeeming quality to this film. Go buy a Fangoria instead--hey, then you can look at the effects in detail. Or get to that anatomy class.

A Hollow Movie
Hollow Man was a film that got plenty of commercial time. I remember its previews, and to be honest, it looked appealing. Ah, but looks can be deceiving. It looked like a pretty fascinating horror movie, worth seeing, that maybe it would have some depth and avoid the cheezy mistakes of past horror flicks. The idea of an invisable man, creating havoc, intrigued me. So I saw it. My analysis is that this is a huge disappointment. The ultimate let down when it comes to potential.

Kevin Bacon is a fine actor, I like him, I really do. He makes a good hero and villain, and in this one he plays the villain. He plays Dr. Caine, who turns out to be this reckless, arrogant mad scientist who breaks rules to break ground. Fine, this is a good character that we can follow. His ultimate dream, project if you will, is to create invisibility. So after many animal experiments, he decides to test it, with him as the guinea pig. Well it works, he's invisible, but he can't change back. And as it turns out, he doesn't want to.

This is good, but where the potential is dropped is when Sebastian Caine goes berserk. There really is no reason established in this movie why he suddenly turns to evil and does these murderous, mischievous deeds. The question "why" kept popping into my head during this movie. I suppose it could be answered that he loved the power of invisibility and never wanted to share it or give it up to anyone else. Or his envy and jealousy got the better of him. But this didn't work for me, there needed to be a better reason on why he snapped.

Elisabeth Shue was Sebastian's girlfriend, now is his best buddy's girlfriend, which is where the envy and jealousy comes from. What I felt would've been better to create the motive was not have the movie start out with Shue being the ex to Sebastian but to have them still be together. Then have her dump him for the better man. Soap operish, I know, but at least it gives us a better motive.

Well, you already know the plot, he goes berserk towards the second half of the film. He molests some pretty young woman in her apartment, then becomes aggressive with Shue, he's rude and utterly evil. Then he decides he's sick of everyone and he's going to kill them all. So one by one he hunts each of the team members who work on his project down. Again, this all came on suddenly. This film lacks understandment to why Sebastian mutated from this over zealous scientiest into this demonic madman. He just turns with no real motive. The plot would be fine if it just gives us a clear and definate reason to why Sebastian turns into this villain.

I thought the special effects were OK, maybe a bit over done. When he starts becoming invisible, we see his muscles and then his skeleton as he's transforming. This didn't look very real, it is so clearly recognizable as computer generated effects. It looked more cartoon like and therefore I wasn't very impressed with the transformation. I did like it whenever somebody threw something on him to visualize him. That seemed real and quite believable.

But you know what bugged me the most about this movie? Despite the sudden switch in Sebastian, despite the failure of potential to enhance the plot, the real issue with this movie is that it's just like all the other corny horror movies out there. It's got the corny lines, the cheap suspense, the typical ending, and the typical "take forever to die monster" formula.

I mean come on, how many horror movies have we seen where it takes forever for the bad guy to die? First Shue torches him with a blow torch, practically reducing him to standing ash. But yet, he's as strong as ever and still alive and still standing! No freaking way! Then he gets electrocuted and yet he's still alive and strong as ever! Then he climbs up a ladder, all burnt and fried, trying to get Shue only to get torched again this time for good. I mean, how corny. Just die, man.

If this movie had ended it with a more thought provoking, dramatic, maybe even sympathizing fashion we might appreciate this movie a whole lot more. But because it had to end with cheese, this film does not separate itself from the 1950's "screamers" or the 1980's "blood and guts" horror flicks. In the end, this film leaves us unsatisfied because I think most of us saw the potential for this movie, but the director stupidely turns it into a horror movie that we can see any time we want on the USA channel. Which after only three years old, that is Hollow Man's new home...the TV. What a hollow movie.

Grade: C-

could've been better
This director's cut pretty much contains all of the deleted scenes from the previous edition with only a few other scenes added in.

They could've included the two commentaries from the other dvd.

I would've liked to see some more new footage as opposed to seeing the old deleted scenes.