Hollow Man 2 (2006) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Critics sometimes say that that an actor "phoned in" his performance. Almost invariably, they are writing figuratively, possibly excepting references to John Forsythe on Charlie's Angels. In this film, however, Christian Slater really could have phoned it in from his living room. Since he is playing an invisible man who stays invisible, his physical presence was not required except for a couple of brief flashbacks and a few seconds in the finale.

It seems that the government has a secret plan to develop invisible assassins. Christian Slater was one of the candidates, but something went horribly wrong in the experiment and he became not only permanently invisible, but stark raving mad as well. Well, actually, he may have been nuts to begin with, since he was picked for the program because his list of war crimes made him expendable. I mean, who would care if a war criminal died as a scientific guinea pig? In fact, one must concede that the government program was actually a complete success. The pentagon met its goal of creating a perfect assassin. On the other hand, he might have been more useful if he had been assassinating terrorists and spies, or at least Broadway actors, instead of wiping out scientists and philosophers and day-care workers and the entire buffet line at Sbarros. But, jeez, no scientific program is ever perfect immediately. Remember how many rockets misfired or blew up in the early days of the space program? Like all those rockets in the Atlantic, the dead pizza customers just have to be viewed as a necessary part of the ironing-out process.

The essence of the film is that Hollow Guy needs to find a scientist who can create more top-secret sera for him. In addition to his invisibility drug, he needs a "buffer" drug because without it he experiences extreme tissue and organ degeneration - which is to say he rots. He finally determines that the only scientist who can help him is an incredibly hot babe, so he hunts her down. Meanwhile, the army has to keep everybody else in the world from figuring out what's going on. The Seattle police get caught in the top secret maneuvering because Seattle citizens keep dying and various colonels and generals keep taking over the cases without explaining why. The denouement of the film comes when the hunky young male cop and the incredibly hot female scientist go on the lam, running from ... well, from everyone, more or less. Hollow Guy is trying to find them so he can get the sera and then kill them. The Army is trying to find them so they can kill them and prevent the sera from being made. They are also being pursued by some bill collectors from Sera 'R Us, and even by one of Hollow Guy's fellow graduates of Invisible Assassin Academy, who is rotting faster than a bruised banana.

The film is completely routine, rounds up the usual suspects, and really makes no use at all of an interesting premise (invisibility) until the last five minutes of the film when two invisible dudes fight it out in the rain. That actually was a pretty cool scene, but before that the special effects consisted of a bunch of actors throwing themselves around a room, pretending to interact with an invisible guy. Nothing about the film is original, but it is assembled in a workmanlike fashion with good photography, respectably good acting, a reasonably effective musical score, a good 2.35:1 DVD transfer, and three "making of" featurettes. It is a competent DVD of a competent but uninspired movie.