'Hollow Man's' Vision Is Impaired
Ever since he made the transition from an interesting director of crafty European films to blockbusting Hollywood juggernaut, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven has made an ingenious practice out of giving the public what it ostensibly wants -- namely, loads of kinky sex and high-tech violence -- while at the same time backhandedly mocking the audience for salivating at the screen.
When this ex-mathematician's patented formula works ("Robocop," much of the underappreciated satire "Starship Troopers"), his films carry a visceral, pleasurably maddening charge that few movies can muster. When the theorem goes awry ("Showgirls," "Basic Instinct"), it's like watching a porno film made by a robot.
His new film "Hollow Man," a sleek, technically impeccable updating of one of horror's most honorable conventions, would seem to promise a voyeuristic fever dream right up the director's particular id-clogged alley. Unfortunately, despite a non-stop flow of incredible effects and a gleefully maniacal performance by Kevin Bacon, there's much less here than meets the eye. This time, the sick joke's on both the audience and the filmmaker.
It's a classic setup, and one that I was eager to see rendered with the director's customary whiplash verve and stone-faced amorality. But the film errs badly by making the title character an egomaniacal, unlikable monster from nearly the first frame. A morally indefensible act is committed almost immediately after the transformation, and essentially kills off our vicarious identification before it has a chance to begin. (To give the director a queasy semi-compliment, the much-touted invisible rape scene isn't nearly as explicit as I had imagined going in.)
Bacon almost succeeds in giving his character a tragic, arrested-development bent, but he's left helpless when the final act erupts in increasingly implausible torrents of smoke, flame and splattered plasma. What's the point of stating that absolute power corrupts, when the subject is presented as corrupt from the get-go?
Despite some stunning technical achievements -- Bacon's briefly glimpsed forms are a wonder (not) to behold -- the film really seems to comes alive only when the attractive female cast members are being brutalized (a not uncommon trait for Verhoeven -- think of the way "Troopers" took cackling, gleeful pleasure in transforming its 90210-esque cast into piles of steaming meat -- but one that's never been rendered quite as sickeningly single-mindedly as it is here). Not even the addition of an invisible monkey can keep this from being a long, increasingly unpleasant haul that thuddingly, methodically obliterates any sense of wonder.
"What's it like?" Bacon dreamily asks of a previous subject before undergoing the process himself. It's a question that the film itself never has the wit or patience to attempt to answer.
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
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