Joey Slotnick – Through the Shattered Lens

In the 2000 film Hollow Man, Kevin Bacon stars as Sebastian Caine. Sebastian is a brilliant scientist who has created a serum that, when taken, will turn someone invisible. It’s quite an accomplishment, but you get the feeling that no one’s particularly happy about Sebastian being the one who discovered it. That’s because Sebastian is an arrogant narcissist who is not only a bit of a perv but who also listens to terrible prog rock whenever he’s driving around town. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past, I am firmly of the opinion that progressive rock is the music of evil people, and no film makes that argument clearer than Hollow Man.

Having already successfully tested the serum on a gorilla, Sebastian decides to take the experiment a step further and take the serum himself. Soon, Sebastian is invisible. At first, Sebastian is content to play mean but ultimately harmless pranks on his colleagues, but soon his behavior grows worse and worse. Is the serum causing Sebastian to lose his mind, or has being invisible allowed Sebastian to reveal his true self? It’s not easy to say, because Sebastian was hardly a likable guy before he took the serum. He’s always been a jerk and, even before taking the serum, he was already obsessed with both his ex-girlfriend Sarah (Elisabeth Shue) and his next-door neighbor (Rhona Mitra). What is certain is that Sebastian soon becomes addicted to his invisibility. Whenever the serum wears off, he resents the tests that his colleagues put him through. The invisible man starts to stalk and kill his colleagues.

Oh, this film. Hollow Man is an update of The Invisible Man, but it doesn’t quite work. The first time that I saw this movie, I thought it seemed to be excessively mean-spirited, but I figured that, since it was a Paul Verhoeven film, there had to be some sort of satiric subtext to all of the blood and the sexual violence. But then I read an interview with Verhoeven where he said that Hollow Man was the most impersonal of his American films and that it was also a film that he felt any director could have made. Verhoeven said that making the film was such a discouraging experience for him that, despite the film’s box office success, it still inspired him to leave Hollywood and return to Europe.

The film is relentlessly cruel. The actors who play Sebastian’s colleagues — Shue, Josh Brolin, Joey Slotnick, Kim Dickens, Greg Grunberg, Mary Randle, and William Devane — are all likable, but they’re also stuck playing stock characters who have to do stupid things so that they can be in a position to die in the most gruesome ways possible. (The scene where Grunberg’s neck starts spurting blood is particularly grotesque.) With the exception of a scene where an invisible Sebastian drives around Los Angeles, there’s very little of Verhoeven’s trademark wit. Perhaps if this film were a low-budget grindhouse film, it would be more fun. As it is, the admittedly effective special effects just leave you wondering if any of that money could have been spent on a better script.

It’s also hard to watch Kevin Bacon play such an unlikable character. It’s not that Bacon can’t play villains. It’s just that he projects such a down-to-earth, blue-collar attitude that he feels miscast as a mad scientist. Sometimes, he seems to be trying too hard in the role. If there’s anything that we should have learned from Flatliners, it’s that Kiefer Sutherland should play the mad scientist while Kevin Bacon plays the guy who understands how dangerous an uncontrolled experiment can be. Bacon should have been the one saying, “You’re going to make yourself invisible? Are you stupid or something?”

Hollow Man is ultimately a hollow film.

Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) is a pilot for Trailblazers Airlines. When he arrives for his flight from Singapore to Honolulu, he is not thrilled to discover that one of his passengers is going to be the recently captured fugitive, Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter). However, that soon turns out to be the least of his problems as his plane ends up flying straight into a storm. With the plane damaged, Brodie is forced to land on an island. Unsure of how long it’s going to take the airline to find the plane, Brodie heads into the jungle to find help. Accompanying him is Louis, who turns out to be the not that bad of a guy at all.

Unfortunately, there are some actual bad guys on the island. In fact, it turns out that the island is controlled by Datu Junmar (Evan Dale Taylor), a vicious terrorist who is implied to be connected to ISIS. Junmar and his men plan to take the passengers and crew hostage. In New York, a mysterious man named Scarsdale (Tony Goldwyn) has arranged for a group of mercenaries to travel to the island and rescue the crew and the passengers. However, it’s not clear whether the mercenaries are going to make it to the island in time. Can Brodie defeat the terrorists and help everyone escape from the island?

Fortunately, Brodie Torrance may just be a pilot who works for an admittedly third tier airline but he’s also Gerard Butler. From the minutes we first see Brodie, we know that there’s probably more to him than just flying commercial planes. And indeed, it does turn out that Brodie knows how to throw a punch. He also knows how to fire a weapon and how to run someone over on a landing strip. Again, he’s Gerard Butler. Gerard Butler really doesn’t get enough credit for being an actor who is believable as both an action hero and a normal human being. Someone like Dwayne Johnson is always credible when he’s fighting someone or shooting a weapon or delivering a one liner but it’s always difficult to picture him as someone who goes to the mall or gets his oil changed every year or who does anything else that feels remotely like everyday life. Gerard Butler, on the other hand, is credible whether he’s punching out a villain or shopping at a grocery store. He’s the everyday action hero and Plane makes good use of his talents.

Plane is a simple and admirably straight-forward film. Brodie lands on an island that’s full of terrorists. Brodie has to defeat the terrorists and escape from the island. There aren’t a lot of unnecessary complications or attempts to fool the audience into thinking that Plane is something more than it is. Instead, Plane embraces its status as an action movie and it tells its story in a brisk 107 minutes. It’s entertaining and it’s undemanding and, even though it was released way back in January, it’s a good film for the summer months. In the past, straight-forward, well-made action films were so common that we took them for granted. Today, in this age of bloated, CGI-heavy cinematic universes, messy continuities, and movies that often run closer to three hours than 90 minutes, a film like Plane is a cause for celebration.