The basic “Hollow Man” plot:  

1. Led by an extremely intelligent albeit arrogant Bacon, a glamorous team of military-funded physicists has uncovered the secret to making primates invisible by “quantum shifting them out of the visible spectrum”.
2. In a project meeting Bacon lies to his military superiors, telling them his team needs more time to tweak the process.  This delay in progress frustrates his superiors.
3. Using the lie to buy more  time, Bacon then lies to his crew and tells them that they have been authorized to go to “phase 3” – trying it on a human – even though extended periods of time in the invisible realm have made other test primates exhibit more aggressive, frightening, and sometimes violent behavior.
4. Bacon appoints himself as the test human for “phase 3”.  Initially he cooperates and participates with all the required testing.  (Although in one scene you may find it odd that immediately after one of his team places all the sensors on his face and head, Bacon immediately takes them all off.)
5. Something goes wrong with the shift-back-to-the-visible-realm process, and Bacon remains invisible.  Despite Bacon’s reassurance to his team that they will figure it out and his warning to them not to tell their military superiors, Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin (the “more important” members of Bacon’s team) tattle on Bacon.
6. Bacon finds out that Shue is romantically involved with Brolin.  Since Shue is Bacon’s ex who he still has feelings for, Bacon becomes severely jealous.  Then Bacon finds out that someone told the military bosses.  He fears the project will be taken away from him.
7. In a weak plan to protect “his” project, the invisible Bacon attempts to kill everyone involved.  But due to his Stupidity (capital “S” used intentionally) he ends up getting killed by Shue and Brolin who, remarkably, really have no weapons.

In the beginning of the movie, Bacon and his team work in a super-high-tech lab located twenty stories underground beneath an old warehouse.  This super lab apparently needs to be hidden because of the secrecy required to protect the cutting-edge scientific experiments which take place within it.

The movie assumes that Bacon routinely driving his highly-polished Porsche to and from the warehouse would raise no unwanted suspicion, or make anyone think that possibly something of interest was underway there.

Personally I never think things are out of the ordinary when I see pristine sports cars racing in and out of decrepit, retired warehouses.

I was thankful that the movie didn’t attempt to explain exactly how the process of becoming invisible and then visible again works.  This would not only be impossible and a waste of time, it would also ruin the little bit of fun you would otherwise have.  You just have to accept that these handsome and socially suave geniuses (Bacon and his team) have manipulated the laws of quantum physics and achieved a staggeringly awesome feat.  This is a bit hard to swallow.  It parallels requiring you to believe that the cast of “90210” discovered the cure for cancer, Parkinson’s disease and blindness.  And did it all while they were riding unicycles AND acting cool.

I know of no female who thinks Kevin Bacon is among Hollywood’s sexiest male leads.  Yet this is his role in “Hollow Man”.  Bacon’s role suffers from the classic Hollywood combination of super smart and super pretty.  The same was true for co-star Elisabeth Shue in her movie “The Saint” (sorry, there is no way the discoverer of cold fusion was a pretty young girl – and one who knew how to wear makeup, no less).  If, by some chance, you think Kevin Bacon is a hunk, you may  like how the movie portrays his character’s image.  You might even look forward to the rear-nudity scene where the audience gets to see Bacon’s pale, flaccid butt.  However, given the fact that Bacon’s character is so in love with himself (he once claims he is God), you’ll probably develop an abhorrence for his cockiness early on.

Along with Kevin Bacon becoming invisible, there are two plot twists which are supposed to explain why Bacon takes a turn for the worse and causes the movie to become suspenseful or scary.  They don’t do a very good job, however.

It would appear Bacon’s character is fairly satisfied with his position in life.  He is the lead doctor in a super-high-secrecy experimental quantum physics lab for the government.  He seems highly paid and overly-pleased with himself and his career.  The movie would also have you (or try really hard to have you) believe that Bacon is a sexy woman magnet – this is why the first plot twist makes little sense.  In the movie, Elisabeth Shue is Bacon’s ex-girlfriend.  Even though Bacon continues his romantic interest in her, she is pursuing another handsome physics doctor on the team, Josh Brolin.

Despite Bacon being super cool and super hip, he can’t see past Shue for some reason.  And when he learns that she is attracted to someone less intelligent and less god-like than himself, he turns insanely jealous.  Given Bacon’s character’s profile from the movie, you might wonder why Bacon doesn’t just go find another younger, prettier girlfriend – like the cute one he always watches through his apartment window.  Instead he chooses to let his silly jealousy over one girl fluster into full-blown stupidity.  This is the first plot twist.

The second plot twist is Bacon attempting to keep the military from taking away “his” project by killing everyone involved in the project top down.  While he’s invisible, of course.  Great plan.  Surely no one will ever find out!  The preview for this movie was basically a collection of scenes where Bacon’s invisible character is stalking or attacking various people involved with the project.

Bacon’s character, in his murdering spree, inevitably does something dumb and ends up getting killed.  Never mind Bacon is quite possibly the most intelligent quantum physicist on the planet, young, in fair physical condition, AND invisible!  Combine all these elements and you’d think you had a nearly invincible super villain.  You will be amazed at how easily Bacon gets killed - even though he was invisible moments before.

 “Hollow Man” was meant to be a thriller, but those drawn to see it are most likely eager to witness the special effects.  Unfortunately, all the real good special effects are shown in the movie preview, so you won’t be pleasantly surprised or suddenly impressed with any of the other effects you see during the movie.  Still, it is neat to see them again, even though the preview already blew it  The only ones you don’t see are the one with Bacon (invisible) on top of a steam pipe strangling the likeable, yet dumbest member of his team, and the one where Brolin is using a fire extinguisher to fill a hallway with visible atmosphere so he can see Bacon, who is prowling around trying to kill him.

The special effects in this movie are outstanding.  If you enjoy special effects, this movie is worth seeing.  And although I’m certain much could be written about how achieving invisibility is impossible, I want to point out one blatant technical inaccuracy.

Bacon becoming invisible involves every molecule of his body shifting (via some quantum-physics miracle) out of the visible spectrum.  During his shift to invisibility in the movie, he becomes unconscious.  When he first wakes up, he complains that the light hurts his eyes.  This is because, according to an explanation from Brolin, a quantum physicist on his team, Bacon’s eyelids are transparent.  Of course Bacon didn’t realize this, even though he is the one who masterminded this process.  So, if everything on Bacon is transparent, his retinas and photo sensors must be transparent also.  So how is he able to see?
 

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