Hollow Man II
May. 23,2006 RAfter the mysterious death of scientist, Dr. Devin Villiers, Det. Frank Turner and his partner are assigned to protect Villiers' colleague, who revealed that a veteran soldier was subjected to an experiment with the objective of creating the ultimate national security weapon... an undetectable soldier. The experiment failed – with disastrous side effects.
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Reviews
Highly Overrated But Still Good
good back-story, and good acting
Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.
I know that Paul Verhoeven was unsatisfied by the results of the original "Hollow Man" movie (which he directed), so I am kind of mystified by why he would participate in not just a sequel, but a fairly low budget direct to DVD sequel. (Though he just acted as a producer and didn't direct this time around.) Anyway, I thought that this sequel did improve on the original movie in one aspect - it doesn't have the sour and nasty feel that happened the first time around. And while this movie had a much lower budget than the original, the special effects are often quite good for a straight to DVD movie. However, the script clearly needed some more work before shooting began. There are some dull stretches, but a more pressing problem is that there are some murky plot details that are clearly lacking proper explanation. In the end, the movie is so-so, and is only recommended for fairly undemanding viewers who can see it for free or little cost.
It's not as good as the first one(which wasn't quite a masterpiece, its third act was a step down), but you probably knew that already. Unfortunately, it simply isn't great by any standard. "Average" is the key-word here, with few exceptions. The effects aren't half bad, and the overall production is decent enough. There's at least a single reasonable detail in this, and there's arguably one decent action scene. It isn't entirely deprived of entertainment value. However, everything in this is one-dimensional. The plot that takes the next logical step from the original, the characters that range between bland to irritating or downright obnoxious, the whole shebang. There is little suspense or tension. It tries too hard at scaring us(and several of these are cheap jump-ones, the one that opens this being particularly stupid) and making us laugh, and it fails with every lame attempt at the latter. The script is clichéd. So many of the things done when invisible are just plain silly. The dialog varies between being nothing special and poor. Too many things don't make sense or hold up, even without thinking much about them. You have to wonder why they bothered, if this was all they could come up with. There is a bunch of moderate violence and disturbing content, relatively infrequent strong language, and equally gratuitous, a little nudity and sexuality in this(purely for the sake of eye-candy). I recommend this to those who just *gotta* have more Hollow Man horror, regardless of the quality. 5/10
Det. Frank Turner (Peter Facinelli) and his partner Lisa Martinez (Sarah Deakins) are sent to protect pretty scientist Dr. Maggie Dalton (Laura Regan), who holds the formula for 'The Buffer', the top secret serum psychopathic special-forces assassin Michael Griffin (Christian Slater) needs to stay alive. The only problem: Griffin is invisible!The makers of Hollow Man 2 clearly didn't have the budget of the original: bad guy Griffin (Christian Slater) is invisible from the outset, saving a bundle on 'gradually disappearing human' CGI effects. But despite being strapped for cash, there really is no excuse for such a lame sequel, which suffers from a lacklustre plot, dull performances, and most surprisingly, a lack of trashiness. If only director Claudio Fäh had taken a leaf or two out of executive producer Paul Verhoeven's book and ladled on the excess, HM2 would have been a hell of a lot more entertaining (blood, guts and boobies don't cost the earth, but are guaranteed crowd pleasers).As it stands, HM2 is predictable straight to DVD junk that offers very little to fans of the first film: what effects there are have a distinctly cheap look; Slater phones in the majority of his performance (he only actually appears in a brief flashback); the script and direction are bland; and the film ends rather abruptly with the highly trained Griffin being defeated all too easily by Turner.Worse still, the only scene that showed any potential for genuine sleaze—a pair of randy teenagers making a home made porn video discover that Griffin is in their room—is suddenly dropped without any kind of resolution. Did Griffin kill the kids? Did he join in for a kinky invisible man threesome? Who knows? One thing is for sure: Verhoeven wouldn't have let the opportunity to show us what happened slip through his fingers so readily.
Christian Slater takes the lead in this follow up to Hollow Man, this time the invisible man is a rogue soldier in the hunt for a serum, to prevent him from dying a slow and painful death.For a low budget movie that went straight to DVD it's actually pretty entertaining, the effects are used sparingly to keep the cost down, but they are effective enough when required. The cast is reasonable and there is enough action to make it enjoyable, even it is inferior to the original in every way.If you liked the original, then this shouldn't disappoint you too much, but part of me does still think - What was the point? 5/10