Movie Review - Hollow Man 2

f anything ever stank of "pointless sequal" it was going to be this. Most people watching this will have seen the original and be fully aware the lab was destroyed, Kevin Bacon was killed and all the research destroyed. Only 1 person escaped alive.

This one drops you right into the invisiblity and I assume that was Christian Slater (the only recognisable name in the cast) playing our Invisible Man judging by his voice, you know the film is going to stink as they go for gratuitous nudity in the opening scene.

After the gruesome murder scene eventually leading to the squeaky stair I figured we were going to be lead by the nose and told in a very loud slow voice exactly what the Director intended to use as plot devices and theres nothing worse than a Director who thinks his potential audience are such cretins he has to explain the movie to them before scenes happen.

As a Director he also doesn't know how night vision video cameras work (with the pointless and equally impossible Invisible man reveal in the teens bedroom, it'd be likely if it were thermal) and the police protection idea is also pointless as the house is left unlocked and there are a number of times when Invisible Slater can enter the house.

Using the cat is lame (has the Director not seen Alien?) and as predicted the squeaky step is the "tell". Invisible Slater is an idiot though, attacking & killing a cop (this is addressed later but seemed totally mindless and pointless at the time). You also have to wonder where a naked Invisible Man stores his flashbangs.

For someone being chased by Black Ops Military, Invisible Slater is a complete idiot as he draws far too much attention to himself chasing Frank the cop and Maggie the Biologist. He was going to be pretty badly injured after being hit by a car though and not in a fit state to be chasing people around Seattle (I saw the Space Needle in the background).

We were being asked to accept that whatever Invisible Slater injected himself with was able to cure all his injuries from the car crash (Theres suspension of disbelief and then theres asking to believe the impossible, clearly this Director wasn't sure where the line was).

Frank is clearly in rule breaking mode (not just helping Maggie escape he drives through a no entry sign & he also he steals a car) then Maggie explains about the invisible man and after 43 minutes of movie we actually discover our invisible man is called Micheal Griffin.

We do at last get to see the experiment (and the 1st on screen appearance of Slater almost 44 minutes into a movie where he is the star) and they explain he is Special Forces which explains some of his strength & fighting ability. Maggie was lied to and told Griffin had died and was then fired, the invisiblity program was clearly going to be used for military purposes.

Griffins initial purpose is revealed, he is trying to get himself a buffer drug (it is unclear if this reverses the invisibilty or what it actually does, they may have explained it. If they did, I missed it). The suspicion theme is played on heavily with Maggie being jumpy about the clerk at the gas station but the idea is reinforced when you see how the Military are trying to monitor and detect them.

When Maggie & Frank go to meet someone who had been sending Maggie mysterious texts they discover Griffin was not the only success in the Invisibilty experiment, it turns out there were 3 more. The 1st only lasted 8 days, their contact was number 2 and Griffin was number 3.

Lawrents, Invisible Man number 2 explains the program was hushed up to allow the Military to assassinate specific political targets until Griffin went loco and started killing anyone he felt like. The themes of paranoia and fear of the unknown or unseen are worked well with Maggie jumping at the merest noise or shadow.

Griffin kidnaps Maggies sister (although you have to wonder how he knew where she lived?) forcing Maggie to meet him with the buffer drug at the train station and the Director further compounds his camcorder night vision mistake by repeating it a second time.

The complete non-response of people to a half naked women screaming "help me" whilst being dragged by an unseen force is pretty astonishing (you'd think at least 1 good samaritan would try to intervene?) although when Frank locks himself in the store you already know he'll be leaving thanks to invisibility.

The twist occurence to the guy in charge of the Invisibility program is fast and if you blink you'll definately miss it. Theres a pretty inexcusable goof in the lab that you cant see any of Griffin's face after Maggie clearly sprays him in the eyes with paint, you can even see the paint marks around the eye holes of his mask but no trace of paint inside.

Having 2 invisible men (as Frank is now invisible as well of course) fight each other in the rain is exciting to watch but pretty damn stupid as Griffin should be in no fit state to do anything having just fallen from at least 3 floors up through a window onto solid concrete.

Griffin regaining visibilty is very cool to watch but I was too annoyed by the fact that Maggie seemed uneffected by the same dose of rat poison which she actually took before him so it should have taken effect earlier in her. Perhaps our awful Director forgot that bit of the movie that happened only a few minutes earlier.

The end is left very open with Maggie recovering in hospital (I find it unlikely that badly injured Invisible Frank would have been able to easily get her to medical attention) and a look at Frank leaving things open for another movie which would be an even worse idea than this one was.