When it comes right down to it, Hollow Man 2 is not as bad as most people make it out to be. It is no masterpiece and is about as far away from that descriptive as possible, but it is watchable. The best way to describe this film would be akin to a television movie of the week with all the production values and trappings associated with them. Overall, while the film was not the worst one ever made, there were some faults to be found and the bad did manage to outweigh the good.

Peter Facinelli was decent as the protagonist of this film, showing a little charisma and you could tell that he wanted to do a good job. Opposite him as the villain and titular hollow man would be Christian Slater who did a fairly terrible job. Most of what Slater put across on screen can be blamed on the script which was not very good in the slightest and at times, even juvenile in its use of dialogue. The story itself was fine even if it did not continue off of the first film, and that in itself would be another mistake on the producer’s part. It might have made for a much stronger picture if that particular storyline continued rather than create something altogether new. Whatever the case, most films can survive even if they are sub-par in most aspects, but with a bad script like this film sported, it makes it really hard to swallow and at times, almost impossible to watch.

There is a lot of action, so the movie did have that going for it and keeping the pace up and frantic probably helped it more than anything else. The special effects were not the greatest, again being more on par with a television budget from the 1990s and thus not looking very good whatsoever. When Slater was wholly invisible most of it was fine, but the scene where Laura Regan’s character is essentially flying through the air backwards was quite atrocious. Regan herself was okay in the role, but seemed to just be phoning it more often than not, probably realizing exactly what kind of picture this was going to turn out to be.

Still, at the end of the day the film was okay, bad, but okay. This is a film that you would never seek out for any reason, but if it found you and if you had absolutely nothing else to watch, this would do in a pinch and you would not feel as if you had wasted a part of your life like some other movies make you do nor it would not be the most terrible thing to ever happen. If you want to see a film about an invisible man, watch The Invisible Man or even the first Hollow Man as they are much better in every way.

2 out of 5