Product Details

• Actors: Elizabeth Shue, Kevin Bacon, Josh Brolin
• Directors: Paul Verhoeven
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English, French
• Subtitles: English, French
• Dubbed: French
• Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: January 2, 2001
• Run Time: 112 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (260 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00003CXKA
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,702 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Hollow Man (Special Edition)" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

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

Product Description

After years of experimentation, Dr. Sebastian Caine, a brilliant but arrogant and egotistical scientist working for the Defense Department, has successfully transformed mammals to an invisible state and brought them back to their original physical form. Determined to achieve the ultimate breakthrough, Caine instructs his team to move on to Phase III: human experimentation. Using himself as the first subject, the invisible Caine finds himself free to do the unthinkable. But Caine's experiment takes an unexpected turn when his team can't bring him back. As the days pass, he grows more and more out of control, doomed to a future without flesh as the Hollow Man. Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin star in this intense thriller filled with extreme suspense, terrifying twists and incredible special effects.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Hollow Man? Hollow Movie... November 14, 2003

By John

Format:DVD

Paul Verhoeven directed "RoboCop" (1987), "Total Recall" (1990), and "Basic Instinct" (1992). His films all have a hard edge. "Hollow Man" has the edge. It's lacking the brains and heart of the others.

Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) is a brilliant scientist in charge of a US Government-funded underground facility investigating into invisibility serums. They have the ability to turn animals invisible, but up until now there has been no way to reverse it. Now, Sebastian has found a reversal formula, and it works.

Sebastian, afraid his research will be stolen away from him, keeps all records of progress from the military. He is obsessed with power and he doesn't know what to do now that it's all over. ("It feels like the beginning of the end," he says.) And so without asking for permission from his funding, Sebastian becomes the first human to turn invisible to the naked eye - the only thing that can pick up his traces are heat goggles that look like something out of a science fiction movie. Oh, wait...

The serum starts to take a deadly turn, however, when Sebastian feels that everyone is out to get him. He is afraid his colleagues will turn him in, and so he traps them underground and starts to kill them off, one-by-one.

His fellow scientists include: Linda (Elisabeth Shue, who somehow gets top billing over Bacon), Matthew (Josh Brolin), Sarah (Kim Dickens), Carter (Greg Grunberg), and Kramer (William Devane). Linda was his ex-lover sometime in the past. Now she's going out with Matthew. Sebastian doesn't like this; it's part of what triggers his ferocious outbreak in the first place. In short, the guy goes crazy and there's nothing they can do about it except pray and hunt him down with their little goggles and stun guns.

Sebastian considers himself God. ("How many times have I told you you're not God? I am.") We can tell from the beginning that he has problems with control and superiority. The serum, which has some serious side effects like those you hear in fine print on commercials for medicine, only unleashes his darker side he tries to conceal.

And Verhoeven has a strong handle on the different phases of his personality change, unlike most films. Unforunately, whereas "RoboCop" and "Total Recall" seemed much more serious, "Hollow Man," like his 1997 film "Starship Troopers," feels too over-the-top and goofy for its own good. His earlier films always had a touch of that over-the-top action spectacular stuff. This one has too much.

If there were ever a movie for Paul Verhoeven, it is this. It's the tailor-made film just for him, much like "RoboCop" was. He has free roam to create an invisible man who slowly becomes hostile and hunts his victims. Think about "Total Recall"--remember how Verhoeven's imaginations were perfectly displayed on screen? How real it all was? How gripping and suspenseful?

There's something missing here. It's the perfect material for Verhoeven, and it has his distinctly hard edge, but it is dumb, and it feels more like an average slasher movie with a large budget than a smart thriller. Especially towards the end, which has its fun parts but becomes over-the-top and quite ridiculous. Of course, the bad guy always gets back up for one last scare, but (spoiler alert!) Sebastian gets up three times. And he's not even supernatural -- he's just invisible. He gets torched with a flamethrower, knocked over the head, electrocuted, and blown up his lab facility. Then he manages to climb up an elevator shaft and grab Linda one last time. HUH? And since when does electricity not spread through water? These guys are extremely advanced scientists, yet they never stop to ponder over why basic science knowledge has just been proved incorrect.

I'm being too harsh. I won't lie. The film has its moments of interest and truly amazing special effects--some of the best I've ever seen in a motion picture, in fact. If "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" was an opening for live action/animation and "Terminator 2" was the breakthrough motion picture for pure special effects, this is the next level. It starts with an intriguing premise, just as "RoboCop" and "Total Recall" did, only those two films kept elevating the action, suspense, plot, and emotional attachment, something that "Hollow Man" is lacking. Perhaps a better title would have been "Hollow Movie"?

"Hollow Man" is rated R for strong violence, language, and sexuality/nudity.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Are they serious??????????? February 5, 2001

By Ricardo J. Estevez

Format:DVD

Are we supposed to take Kevin Bacon's character seriously? Here we have a man who's endowed with such genius that he works for the Federal Government in top secret projects and the only thing the twit can think of doing is getting off sexually, one way or another. The character of Sebastian is one dimensional, at best and to boot, he's positively loathsome. His descent from scientist to homicidal maniac is so abrupt that you are left to wonder if you nodded off at some point and missed a chunk of the character's development. But how could you have missed anything when there is hardly any character to speak of and the development was as methodical and deliberate as flicking on a light switch. No amount of impressive special effects can save this dog of a movie. Elizabeth Shue and Josh Brolin turn in the pedestrian performances of their careers and Kevin Bacon's hammy, over the top bad boy incarnation grew tiresome ten minutes into the movie. Incidentally, I never knew that being invisible was synonymous with being invincible. Sebastian turned into the indestructible Michael Myers with surprising ease. Laughable through and through. Bad acting, silly plot, predictable screenplay but great special effects. In other words, typical of the Hollywood pablum factory.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars AAARRGGH! GET IT AWAY! June 19, 2001

By Rm31d

Format:DVD

I wish I could give this two-hour pain parade no stars, but I'll settle for the lowest rating available to me. This movie just -how to word it correctly- it just sucks. Ten minutes into it, I was unsuccessfully trying to slit my wrists with my soft drink straw. I don't even know where to begin condemning it.

Okay, first off, the acting is really lousy. I mean, the Carrot Top movie had more accomplished actors than this disgrace. Second,the screenplay was at about the writing level of a second grader. The movie lacked all the good stuff, like character development, emotional resonance, tension, and intelligence. Instead, we were left with the standard Hollywood sex and gore, and plenty of it! This movie had more unnecessary blood and guts than all the previous Paul Verhoven movies put together. It was obscene. Speakng of which, there were like fifty scenes of the invisible man molesting his female victims. It was disgusting. And no, I don't needto see Kevin Bacon's nether regions that often, thank you very much.

Some movies are described as bloody car wrecks. "The Hollow Man" is the celluloid equivilent of the Chernobyl disaster. I mean, Paul screwed up big time with "Starship Troopers" and "Showgirls", but at least they were the fun kind of bad. This movie, however, doesn't merely stink. It shouldn't be screened near open flame. If you want more intelligent viewing, try staring at your shoe for two hours. It'll be just as entertaining.