'Hollow Man' needs more substance

Lame story lines are just an excuse to get from one astounding special effect to another in this gory thriller.

By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 4, 2000

The coolest thing about encyclopedias during childhood was the section devoted to human anatomy, with perhaps a dozen clear plastic pages and brightly colored illustrations.

All of the combined transparencies showed a naked body, but the fun part was stripping away the layers, from flesh to internal organs to skeleton. Each turned page eliminated or replaced another piece of this complex puzzle, a childish gross-out game for tamer times.

Kind of like a primitive ancestor to the best parts of Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man.

Verhoeven uses astounding special effects to turn those old encyclopedia pages into a flip-book of computerized gore. The story is an updated version of Claude Rains' 1933 disappearing act as The Invisible Man, but Hollow Man doesn't settle for dreamy fade-outs and unwrapped gauze. Tissue erodes, circulatory systems acidify and bones dissolve. Very messy. Very now.

Kevin Bacon is the guinea pig. He plays Sebastian Caine, which rhymes with vain, which sums up his character. This is an immediate problem, since Caine's experiments with an invisibility formula are destined to turn him into a maniac. We never have a chance to like this guy, to feel sympathy with his transformation. Nicely portrayed, though.

Caine bullies colleagues, declares himself a god and endangers animals. And that's before a shot of his serum starts melting his body and sanity. He still carries a torch for scientist Linda McKay (Elisabeth Shue), who's sleeping with a lab mate (Josh Brolin). Shue carries on the Verhoeven tradition of underwritten females, except for the seductive parts.

Hollow Man uses romantic conflict and comic strip debates on scientific ethics as dull excuses to reach the next big special effects scene. Verhoeven and visual effects chief Casey Cannon handle those in superb fashion, making Caine's physical disintegration more fascinating than his mental state.

A process allows Bacon to act in scenes with various drapings or fluids to let us know he's there. Water, steam, smoke and blood cover his shape to an eerie effect. Verhoeven also knows that old-fashioned viscera still work, so he slathers plenty of those around the set. The third act becomes a parade of impalings, gaping wounds and snapped spines.

The gory action is fine, but isn't there anything else for an invisible man to do than kill or fondle unsuspecting women? As usual, Verhoeven's aim is narrowed to sex and violence, the more degrading and gratuitous, the better. A suggested rape threatens to push the film into Showgirls territory before a rare display of restraint.

Verhoeven treats viewers to enough horrific sights to make Hollow Man a great date flick for Fangoria magazine subscribers. What the movie lacks in suspense it makes up with gruesome enthusiasm. Not, however, to the lengths of Verhoeven's cartoonish sadism in Starship Troopers or the stink of Showgirls.

Maybe that's what Hollow Man needs, a reason to make us feel outraged instead of merely nauseated. Verhoeven is at his best (or worst) when he gets under your skin and makes it crawl. Hollow Man is only good for a few shivers.

Hollow Man

• Grade: C+
• Director: Paul Verhoeven
• Cast: Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin, William Devane
• Screenplay: Andrew W. Marlowe
• Rating: R; graphic violence and gore, profanity, sexual situations, nudity
• Running time: 105 min.