Hollow Man 2 DVD: Review By Mushy

While I really enjoyed the first Hollow Man movie, I was curious how there could be a second one. I wasn't only concerned about the story, but that film seemed to put visual effects across that the world had never seen on screen before. So it was with some reluctance that I went into Hollow Man 2. Well, after about the opening 10 minutes of the movie I realized that while this film was certainly working with less money than the first installment, Hollow Man 2 was going to be a more cerebral look at the main character and the effect that he has on other people during the course of the film.

Christian Slater stars in this movie as the central character who has gone rogue. The underrated Peter Facinelli and Laura Regan are the scientists who are trying to stop him. What ensues is an interesting game of cat and mouse in which we are never quite sure what is going to happen for everyone involved. Utilizing more "practical effects," I think this film holds up well with it's predecessor because it doesn't try to compete with it. Rather, it seems to focus more on the characters and the situations, with the effects used in a spare manner to highlight what could happen if our heroes don't succeed.

Inside Hollow Man 2

A featurette that generally shows how the director wanted to take this film one step further. Not so much in a visual effects sense but with the ideas and moral implications of the first film. We get to see how the "invisible man" moments are pulled off and how director Claudio Faeh is truly an actor's director. Following anybody is hard, but the team behind Hollow Man 2 seemed not only up to the challenge, they very much met it head on.

Visual FX Comparison

This was a good comparison featurette because it takes a few scenes from the film and really breaks them down. Also, it does this in a very simple manner whereby it looks at things in their rough, intermediate and final forms. What I found interesting was that, to me, the intermediate stage looked fine, but it was only in the final viewing of the scenes on display that I realized just how seamlessly the effects had been pulled off.

Storyboard Comparisons/Gallery

In this section of the DVD, the director explains the scene and then we see the scene but we also see it in storyboard form. While I have never really known how much or how little people care about seeing things of this nature, I think it might be a little more pertinent on a DVD like Hollow Man 2. I say this because how can you storyboard for someone that's invisible?

The gallery in this featurette has a bunch of very well drawn images from the film that remind me of something out of Jonny Quest.

Anamorphic Widescreen - 1.85:1. I really loved the look of the movie. I can only describe the images as condensed. Everything seems very sharp and hard. There is also a darkness to the scenes but not in a way that makes this movie difficult to watch. Also, the story is told in a fairly straight forward manner. So it's almost as if we are seeing a mystery film from the 1930s, with effects thrown in every so often. Also, since the effects are used more sparingly here, I think that very much adds to this film's overall theme of paranoia.

Dolby Digital 5.1 - English. Subtitled in English and French. When this film started off, I was expecting it to have suspense music laced throughout the soundtrack. Thankfully, this wasn't a movie that needed to rely on that audio component. Sure, it starts off that way but once things settle in and we see where the characters are going, the music and dialogue contribute to the mood more than anything else.

The cover of this movie is awesome. Right away I was highly intrigued because it really pays homage to the invisible man, while also showing that Hollow Man 2 is going in a different direction than the first film. Also, it's use of dark colors really inform how this movie is going to look upon viewing it. The back cover gives us some shots from the film, a description of what Hollow Man 2 is about, a "Special Features" listing, a cast list and technical specs. This DVD case also comes with a cardboard covering that has similar front and back artwork.

Having had a chance to interview Claudio Faeh after I screened the movie, I found out some interesting tidbits. The main one being that the screenplay for Hollow Man 2 was actually supposed to be the first film. In fact, Wolfgang Peterson was originally going to direct this script and then Paul Verhoeven took the helm, and the scope of the movie changed a bit and so did the screenplay. When one considers that this is Faeh's second or third film, I think the work he has done here is very impressive.

People would be wrong to see this movie as simply a knock off of the first Hollow Man. It is it's own entity that certainly explores different aspects of the invisible man dilemma.