Few filmmakers have been better at filtering potent, timely themes through science fiction elements than Paul Verhoeven. Corporate greed infiltrating our ideas of law, order and society? Robocop. Military-industrial complex propaganda reshaping our role in the universe? Starship Troopers. Even Total Recall has something to say about identity, memory, and what it means when you can’t easily sift between truth and fabrication. All of these films have received ample reappraisal in recent years, turning them into masterpieces of the genre.
And if there’s any Verhoeven film that deserves that kind of treatment next, it’s Hollow Man. The 2000 film has a complicated legacy, one that balances the sobering cruelty on display in the film, the equally sobering prescience of its themes, and the swing-for-the-fences special effects. But 25 years after its release, its ideas have never hit home so effectively.
