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The Story
Dr. Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) is a genius who comes up with a mean to transform laboratory mammals to an invisible state. Unfortunately, Dr. Caine is as egotistical as he is ambitious, and he possesses the "God" complex. After transforming a dog and a gorilla into the invisible state, Dr. Caine struggles with the formula to bring them back to the normal, visible state. Eventually, the brilliant Dr. Caine makes a breakthrough and successfully brings back the gorilla to the visible state. His elation is short-lived when he realizes that the Department of Defense would take over the project and begin conducting experiments on human subjects without his oversight. Taking matters into his own hands, he proceeds to conduct his experiments on a human subject -- using himself as the test subject!
After his successful transformation into the invisible state, Dr. Caine breaks some of his own research and laboratory rules and ventures outside of the secret underground laboratory compound. Out in the real world, he could not resist taking advantage of his invisible state to spy on his team members and do more than just "casual" voyeurism. Dr. Caine begins to transform into an evil person, perhaps as a side effect of being in the invisible state?
The visual special effects, particularly during the "bio-phase shifting" (the gradual process in which a mammal transforms from a normal state to that of invisibility, or vice versa) scenes, are visually dazzling. They're awesome! I've never seen visual special effects that look so real! Hats off to the Sony Pictures ImageWorks visual special effects team -- spectacular work!
The Extras
As a Superbit
Deluxe DVD, Hollow Man comes with a second disc that is packed with
extra materials, including: "Hollow Man: Anatomy of a Thriller" HBO making-of featurette, three deleted scenes with director's commentary, "Fleshing out the
Hollow Man" behind-the-scenes featurette consisting of
fifteen segments, VFX picture-in-picture comparisons of three scenes, two theatrical trailers, and
filmography for cast and crew. The bonus features are a little bit
different from the Special Edition
of Hollow Man previously released. (This Superbit Deluxe DVD
version lacks the audio commentary with director Paul Verhoeven and Kevin
Bacon, and the isolated music score with commentary by Jerry Goldsmith.)
The 15-minute HBO making-of featurette is a good overview of the film and offers an inside look at how they made the film. It includes narration from members of the cast and crew. They even talk about their fantasies if they were somehow able to lead an invisible life. The "Fleshing out the
Hollow Man" featurette consists of fifteen segments, including an insightful study of director Paul Verhoeven and explanations of how the invisible effects were shot given the various conditions and locations.
The VFX (visual effects) picture-in-picture comparisons show the live action characters (Kevin Bacon in black and green body suits) in the main screen, and the finished film with the invisible effect in place in the small screen in the lower right corner of the picture. The comparisons consist of three scenes: "Kramer's Death", "Sprinkler Attack", and "Sebastian's Demise".
The three deleted scenes entitled "Was It A Dream?", "Sebastian Attack", and "Sebastian On The Prowl", show an earlier version of the movie that was edited out after feedback from early screenings. The picture is of finished film quality and contains enough context for the audience to recognize where they would have fit into the movie. It would have been great if the DVD seamless branching feature was used to show the original cut as an alternate storyline selectable by the
viewer.
Video & Audio
The image quality of this anamorphic
widescreen Superbit DVD is excellent. The colors are accurate and
saturated, while shadow detail is superb. The video
transfer is top notch and pays tribute to the Oscar-winning cinematography.
The above average video bit rate that this Superbit version affords greatly
contributes to a stunning, jaw-dropping picture. Case in point:
Isabelle's anatomy, as it reappears during the reversion process in Chapter
4, looks even more three dimensional than the original Hollow Man Special Edition
(non-Superbit) version.
The best part of this Superbit DVD transfer is the
inclusion of the DTS 5.1 surround sound track.
The surround sound channels seem better defined with slightly better
resolution and detail. The Dolby
Digital 5.1 soundtrack is very good, but does not quite match the DTS
soundtrack's level of impact.
Conclusion
Hollow Man is one movie science fiction fans and action-thriller fans won't want to miss. The visual special effects are dazzling and incredibly realistic. I haven't been this impressed with visual special effects since
Terminator 2: Judgment Day. With a fairly rich set of bonus features,
Hollow Man Superbit Deluxe DVD should prove to be one of the more collectible DVD titles for
home theater-philes. This Superbit
Deluxe DVD is the version to buy.
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United We Stand
