Hollow Man
It's like Plato's Republic, only with explosions and blood and Kevin Bacon running around naked.

"I got your nose, Kevin!" "Again, Josh? This is really getting old."

Thousands of years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato told the story of Gyges, a shepherd who discovers a magical ring that grants him the power of invisibility. Thrilled by the fact that his crimes will go unpunished, Gyges murders the king, seduces the queen, and takes over the kingdom of Lydia. The story, featured in the second chapter of Plato's Republic, is meant to highlight the tenuous moral caliber of mankind. It remains one of Plato's most influential works, spurning debate over human nature that would last through the next several millennia.

Which is all well and good, but did Plato's story have exploding elevators? Or rat-eating invisible gorillas? Or Elizabeth Shue and Josh Brolin as -- ponder this, philosophs -- scientists? I'm no deep thinker -- I just saw Hollow Man, after all -- but I'll bet you all the drachmas in the world that Republic didn't have multiple shots of Kevin Bacon's bare ass either. Otherwise I might have read the whole thing. In fact, philosophy students worldwide would benefit well from a screening of Hollow Man, the story of a guy who gets really naked and really evil and runs around killing a bunch of really stupid people. It's ethical dilemma by way of Andrew Marlowe, a man fast shaping up to be the greatest guilty pleasure screenwriter of all time.

"You talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? I wouldn't know, since I didn't bother to make earholes in my mask..."

I haven't felt the way I feel about Hollow Man since End of Days, the Ah-nuld versus Satan saga that stands, I'm afraid, as Marlowe's true masterpiece. Granted, Hollow Man did have moments both stirring and profound -- "You think you're God? I'll show you God!" says scientist Shue, before hitting Bacon over the head with a suspiciously secular fire extinguisher -- but nothing rivaling Ah-nuld's query whether the eve of the millennium would arrive in eastern standard time. If End of Days is Marlowe's Republic, then Hollow Man is his Timaeus, a slightly lesser work whose most notable achievement is provoking readers to believe the impossible. In this case, that Hollow Man would be good.

Now don't get me wrong -- I thought Hollow Man was great. It had icky effects and stuff blowing up and Kevin Bacon running around naked for two hours. What it didn't have was plot, characterization, or one iota of thought in its horny, degenerate little body. This stands as a remarkable accomplishment for Marlowe, who managed to take an intriguing, cerebral tale and pound it into the lowest common denominator. There is a pattern to all of Marlowe's films, including Air Force One, and that is by the end of each movie, the dialogue effectively disappears, lost in a stream of explosions and insults. His ability to reduce stories revolving around foreign terrorism, the second coming of Christ, and man's moral fate to an endless array of firepower is unparalleled.

"See, Elizabeth? Inside, we're just the same."

So when you put this guy together with Starship Troopers/Showgirls/Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven, well... it's kind of like that scene in Hollow Man where Kevin Bacon put a bunch of sulfuric acid in a spinning little machine and everything blew up and there was a lot of fire and... oh, sorry, distracted myself there. There is no denying the fact that Verhoeven is a talented and skilled director, whose sharp cinematography lends his films a distinctive and striking style. There is also no denying the fact that he's a big pervert whose taste runs to the sordid, and so Hollow Man, while boasting the best special effects of the year, is also one of the most misogynist and insulting genre films ever -- or, at least it would be if it weren't so utterly inane. For now, it's just pretty funny.

The plot is simple: brilliant scientist Kevin Bacon works in a lab with a bunch of invisible animals. He and his team of Shue and Brolin spend their hours watching gorillas disappear only to reappear as bitchin' special effect sequences. One day, Kevin -- a.k.a. Sebastian Cane, who Marlowe lets us know right off is a Huge Asshole -- decides if gorillas can do it, so can he, and so he becomes invisible as well, right down to a certain area of his nether regions that becomes rather, well, visible before melting into a mass of shriveling pus. While audiences may have blinked twice, none of the female scientists seem to care, because they have either slept with Cane already (Shue) or are stupider than the animals they work with (Kim Dickens). Filled with a sense of power that knows no moral bounds -- i.e., exactly the way he was before the operation -- Kevin pursues a series of terrifying adventures that culminate in rape, murder, madness, and a dog being walloped into a wall. He's evil, you see, evil!

A game of paintball turns deadly when Kevin Bacon and Josh Brolin star in Hollow Man.

He's also quite entertaining, albeit probably not in the way that was planned. I really, really love Kevin Bacon (see Stir of Echoes for evidence why), but he is awful in Hollow Man, expressing his angry, criminal ways by saying one WORD in a sentence really loud. Like THAT. Josh Brolin is Josh Brolin, and Shue is also Josh Brolin (ie, pretty bad) although newcomer Kim Dickens is the Josh Brolin-est of the bunch. Fortunately, we are distracted from all this by the endless array of explosions, cool visual effects, and general hoopla of Bacon's wacky ways. There is one really great line in Hollow Man, one which, when used in the trailer, made the film seem much more intelligent than it actually is: "It's amazing what you can do when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror anymore." This line, in the end, remains true to the film in ways wholly unintended. Just ask Andrew Marlowe.

DROOL FACTOR: Kevin Bacon, but I'm a die-hard. This is definitely not one of his better pictures, and he's, like, invisible a lot, which makes drooling rather difficult. Plus, he plays a real asshole. Still has the voice, though. Yum!

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: Just about everything. Kevin and a gorilla turning from invisible to visible and back, blood being poured over a floor, a person dying in the blood, Elizabeth Shue in a thong, the presence of Josh Brolin, etc, etc, etc.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: Negative. One of the few truly upsetting aspects of Hollow Man -- as I mentioned previously, the majority of the film is too silly to really leave a mark -- is a scene where Kevin, in full invisible mode, rapes his next-door neighbor. The scene is meant to demonstrate the moral void of the character, which is fine, but the storyline and the woman are disregarded and never touched on again at any point in the film. There are greater things for women to get up in arms about in this world than misogyny in Hollow Man, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth nonetheless.

-- Sarah Kendzior

Hollow Man is now playing nationwide.

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