Watching the trailers, I realized that they share something in common, and that makes me even more excited to see them both!

It takes us back to Hitchcock, as well as the days of "Camelot"...

What the heck am I talking about?

Red Alert-late 70's TV film
and
Jane Doe another TV film great in both.

WOW, man!

WOW indeed!

Mr. Kinsinger, regarding Hollow Man, don't worry about missing anything. It's probably a more respectable effort than his last two movies, which only says that it's better crap (sorry). It'll probably get some positive reviews - as a "guilty pleasure", and I have to say it may merit them.

Someone has said that Mr. Verhoven makes expensive B-movies, and they're quite right. People who go in knowing what kinds of movies to expect from him may enjoy the film as an Enjoyable Bad Movie. Verhoven was smart enough to know that he wasn't going to win anyone over with his dialogue, so he's made sure that

1 - It's paced very quickly. No time is wasted moving the plot.

2 - Very rarely is there not some interesting effect on the screen, so the eye-candy factor is there.

When violence occurs, it's Verhoven-business-as-usual, but it's not as predominant in this plot, as there are only a few people to kill. I have a friend, a film critic, who spoke with Verhoven back when Starship Troopers was first released. He asked him things like "Are you . . . absolutely SURE . . . that you didn't intend this to be funny?" and Verhoven denied it, saying that it was a serious statement about fascism (save the Robocop-esque commercials, of course).

When he interviewed him again for this one, he asked Verhoven to defend that in light of his change of story about a week after Troopers' release. Verhoven capitulated, then went off on his own about some things, and ended up telling of his childhood in occupied ... (Holland?) ... during WWII, and some childhood experiences he had with encountering death closely, personally, on a mass scale. My friend said that it was a glimpse into what might be behind his neuroses, all of which play out in this film, as they have in his others.

This friend and I disagreed about one aspect of the film, that Kevin Bacon's character is already dislikable from the outset. He thought that there should have been some sympathetic moments in the film, invisible man out in the cold rain, naked. I told him that while that might be interesting, I didn;t think Verhoven could actually handle something like that. His most well-developed and sympathetic character is Robocop, which says something. While I didn't like disliking almost everyone on the screen, I did think that Bacon's arrogance made his leap to evil a smaller jump, something Verhoven would be capable of pulling off. He amlost does too.

Do I recommend this movie? Not for you, Chris. It's dumber than Total Recall and while it contains less violence in quantity, it has the same . . . "quality". So less negative, but less positive as well. For others? If you can like a dumb B-movie, say if you were able to enjoy The Mummy, camp and all, then give it a shot, I guess. The elevator scene is a pretty good finale on screen. It won't go down in history, but it is pretty spectacular. And the music does work well, and it's nice to hear.

My friends and I all had the same reaction Monday, "Well, that wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be." It's filled with the usual assumptions, power not only corrupts, but it does so immediately; wounds don't matter after 5 minutes; being evil gives one the strength of 10 men... you know, those. If you can deal with that, you might not mind the time spent.

So there you go.