Cinema
Hollow Man (18, selected cinemas)
Lacking substance
Mark Steyn
Iyield to no one in my admiration for Kevin Bacon. He cheers almost any movie he deigns to show up for. He seems to have an instinctive grasp of the cheesiness of the product and yet an ability to apotheosise it. He does great nude scenes: one thinks of him unfurling his magnificent penis in Wild Things. He has a great face, too: lean, skull- like, pared to the bone, as if he has some- one come in and plane him while he sleeps. And he recently noted with some pride that anybody can get chicks when they're a movie star, it's how many you nailed before you became a star that counts — which may be the most profound observation of any contemporary celebrity.
But ... you knew there was a 'but' com- ing, didn't you? And it's quite a big 'but', too, certainly bigger than Kevin's butt, which in this film's obligatory Bacon nude scene is pert but also a bit pimply looking, though that may have been a scratch on the print and I may be doing the Bacon butty a great injustice ... Where was I? Oh, yes, the 'but'.
But this time round Kevin, in a project he would seem to be ideal for, comes a bad cropper. Hollow Man, directed by Paul Verhoeven, is the latest variation on the H.G. Wells's Invisible Man theme, though I think gentlemen, it's time we gave the euro dialogue a rest.' the studio sees it as part of an older tradi- tion, since, according to the production notes, 'the theme of invisibility is familiar in premodern narrative' dating back to the second book of Plato's Republic. Plato's Republic 2? Steady on, guys, let's see how much Plato's Republic 1 grosses before we commit to the sequel. Anyway, on Hollow Man, Plato evidently bailed out early after script disagreements with Verhoeven, director of Showgirls, Basic Instinct and the widely admired kinky Netherlands sex thriller The Fourth Man. So Andrew W. Marlowe was brought in for the screenplay, and, if Plato's Republic was any use to him, it seems to have been mainly as a doorstop.
In one sense, Hollow Man is a better title than The Invisible Man, conveying not just the physical effect but suggesting the psy- chological damage, too. The possibility exists that we might be in for something up there with David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly. The premise is intriguing, and Bacon seems the perfect choice for its pro- tagonist, Sebastian Caine. We first see him in his apartment, frantically scoffing down junk food and pounding his keyboard as various 3D molecular models dance across his computer screen. Alas, like a bad video game, his digital experiments always end the same way: 'STATUS: UNSTABLE'.
Sebastian is a state-of-the-art mad scien- tist, unstable but with undoubted status. No horn-rimmed specs, lab coat and Bunsen burners. He's a cocky hotshot in black leather working on a hush-hush project for the Pentagon in a top-secret underground lab somewhere in Washington. They're supposed to be coming up with a way of making guys invisible, but the animal tests aren't going too well and those cranky gen- erals are threatening to cut off funding for a programme that's already way over bud- get. I'm not surprised. Sebastian is the first mad scientist ever to drive a silver Porsche. If he just took the bus to work, maybe there'd be enough money for a couple more years. But Sebastian is a driven man. I don't mean he also has a chauffeur, only that he's in a hurry. So he decides to test his special invisible gloop on himself.
Here comes the nude scene. Sebastian removes his robe. We the audience are looking at his rear (see above) but over on the other side the eyes of his fellow scien- tists Linda (Elisabeth Shue) and Sarah (Kim Dickens), widen like saucers. 'Ladies, please,' says Sebastian. 'This is science.' That's really the only classic Kevin Bacon moment in the picture. Next thing you know he's strapped to the gurney writhing in agony as the magic invisible gloop is pumped into his arm and he gradually sheds layers of visibility — skin, sinews, veins, bones — until there's nothing left.
The other scientists fret that the longer he's invisible the greater the risk that the destabilising of his whachamacallits will begin to unhinge him: out of sight, he'll soon be out of mind. The arrogant shit will mutate into a vengeful psycho. You trem- ble in anticipation, either of a great psycho- logical thriller or, failing that, the glorious bravado of top-of-the-line schlock like Bacon's Tremors, about a western town threatened by giant underground worms.
Instead, Verhoeven and Marlowe are too feeble to give us either. How does Sebas- tian use his liberating invisibility? Well, he sneaks up to Sarah while she's dozing, unbuttons her top and cops a feel of her breast. He's not the only one who feels a right tit: so does anyone who's paid good money in the expectation of getting at least a good B-movie thriller. He goes home, sees the hot babe in the next apartment building and goes over to investigate. She doesn't suspect anything at first. Emerging from the shower looking like a Playboy cen- trefold, she feels strangely airbrushed.
After that, we're into a final half-hour where he gets really mad and chases every- one around the lab, complete with all the stock features of the genre. The real hollow man is Paul Verhoeven, who can't even bother disguising the hollowness of his film by wrapping it up in a few attractive acces- sories. Give me that wonderful moment in the 1933 Invisible Man when Claude Rains first unwinds his bandages until there's nothing there. With Hollow Man, there really is nothing there, and the picture's cheap tricks are all too transparent.
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