Hollow Man boasts some pretty impressive visual effects and does have an intriguing story. Kevin Bacon plays Sebastion Caine, an arrogant scientist who develops a serum for invisibility. Withholding information from his superiors, Caine tests his serum on himself and undergoes a transformation that is quite visually arresting. It's like an anatomy book come to life. But while Caine's transformation and subsequent experiments with his new found power prove interesting, the movie fails to capture what it feels like to truly be invisible. Caine says to his colleagues, "You have know idea how much fun this is." In truth, we don't. We see Caine slowly going mad and trapping his fellow scientists in the lab when they threaten to go public. But, we don't get any sense of power from Caine. True he does venture out into public and enters the apartment of his very fetching neighbor, but that's about all the real world we see with Caine. It would've been interesting to see Caine in the real world, and what would've been done to capture him. Instead, we have Bacon, Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin and a few others mixing it up in a hidden lab somewhere in D.C. While the actors try to make the best with what they have, Paul Verhoeven tries to goose us a little. He succeeds in a few instances, and he does manage to hold your attention for a while, but the ending is the weakest link in the movie. Had there been a stronger ending, the movie would've been a little better. As it is now, it's a good exercise in visual effects territory, but there are so many other possibilities that lay with the story of an invisible human being.
