Now you see him, now you don't. Kevin Bacon is the Hollow Man

Kevin Bacon stars as Sebastian Caine, a cocky-but-brilliant scientist who is developing an invisibility serum for the military. He has perfected the first part; his lab is filled with invisible animals in cages. Reinstating visibility is still not possible until a late night Twinkie binge brings the spontaneous solution. Caine tests his solution and brings back a gorilla that was previously not visible to the naked eye. He becomes so excited about his discovery that he bypasses government protocol and moves onto the next stage: human testing. Convincing his partner (and ex-lover) Linda (Elisabeth Shue) to cover up his lie, Caine then injects himself with the invisibility serum and vanishes before his colleague's eyes.

When no one can see him, Caine engages in the kind of predictable hijinx that most men would engage in: he unbuttons the sweater of a female lab partner and cops a look at her breast. Being invisible is fun for a few days (the obnoxiously narcissistic Caine likes putting his colleagues in a state of uneasiness), but he's eventually ready to be seen again. The serum doesn't work right on humans, however, relegating the scientist to more invisibility. After a few days, his mental state becomes effected and Caine goes on a rampage. He rapes one woman and begins killing his co-workers one by one after locking them in the compound.

The first hour of Hollow Man is really interesting. There's an emphasis on the scientific breakthrough as well as the implications of it. I liked watching the egotistical Caine use invisibility as a means of gaining power over others. I only wish the second hour had followed through on the concept instead of turning into a slasher movie. I was reminded of pictures like Alien, in which a group of people trapped in a confined space are killed by a creature-on-the-loose. That whole idea has been done to death in plenty of other movies; rehashing it here seems a little desperate.

The ending also follows silly horror movie logic. Caine is subjected to numerous types of physical abuse by the people he is trying to kill. Somehow, he never seems to get mortally wounded. He just keeps coming back for more, stronger than ever

While those are pretty substantial flaws, I have to say that I enjoyed Hollow Man despite them. My reasons are simple. First, the special effects are incredible. When Caine becomes invisible, we see him dissolve layer by layer. His skin disappears, leaving only the underlying muscle. Then the muscle disappears until he's just a skeleton. Eventually that goes as well. It actually looks kind of unpleasant, as opposed to other "invisible man" movies in which it looks painless and cool. The effects in the rest of the movie are good, too. The other scientists come up with inventive ways of keeping track of Caine (splattering him with stuff usually works). Verhoeven's effects team makes Caine a constant presence in the story, even when nobody can see him.

I also found Hollow Man to be pretty exciting. When Caine turns evil, he does some things that are really creepy. I got tense watching him degenerate into a sicko. The scenes in which Linda and the others try to stop him are effective, as is the grand finale in an elevator shaft. Yes, it's implausible, but Verhoeven directs with such energy that I got caught up in it. Silly though it may be, Hollow Man moves like a bullet from one tense scene to the next.

This could have been a lot more. With some of that old RoboCop intelligence, this might have been the definitive invisible man movie. It's not, but it's still a pretty good one. I like movies about invisibility anyway (especially Chevy Chase's vastly underrated Memoirs of an Invisible Man). Kevin Bacon does a good job playing narcissistic evil, and he is backed up by truly mindblowing special effects. Call it a guilty pleasure, if you will, but I enjoyed Hollow Man as a late-summer piece of action.

( out of four)

Hollow Man is rated R for strong violence, language and some sexuality/nudity. The running time is 1 hour and 52 minutes.