Movie Review: Hollow Man (2000)

The movie stars Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin, Kim Dickens and Mary Randle.

I, of course, love classic, black and white, monster movies. However, one of my least favorites of the classic monsters is The Invisible Man, mostly because those movies tend to be a bit dull. As a result, I pretty much avoided watching this similar-themed film. 

My wife and I, however, were looking for a thriller to watch this weekend and this film happened to be on one of our movie channels. And, since I couldn't find anything else, we ended up watching it. As it turns out, it was actually pretty decent.

There were a number of things I found I liked about this particular film. One of them was the explanation about why he was looking for the secret to invisibility. This is always a big pet peeve of mine with classic films, which usually have a genius scientist performing an experiment with no real value. However, the fact Caine's (Bacon) research was funding by the Pentagon at least hinted it was for military purposes.

I also liked the way Bacon portrayed his character. We learn early on the serum has the ability to turn a test subject insane so that part wasn't much of a surprise. But, Caine himself was very arrogant and already on the brink of madness even before taking the serum. Knowing that set up up limitless possibilities for him once he was invisible because we already knew he wasn't afraid to cross ethical lines if they served his purpose.

Plus, given his obsession with his partner/ex-girlfriend (Shue), it was only a matter of time before he learned she was seeing another one of his lab mates (Brolin) and went even further off the deep end. That part was, admittedly, a little predictable. But, at the same time, it was still interesting, especially when he finally completely snapped and went on an invisible killing spree.

This movie is definitely better than I expected it to be and turned out to be a halfway decent thriller. I would recommend taking the time to watch if if you haven't seen it before.

My Grade: A