Overall Rating
  Awesome: 19.89%
Worth A Look: 35.8%
Just Average: 28.98%
Pretty Crappy: 10.8%
Sucks: 4.55%
12 reviews, 104 user ratings
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| Pitch Black |
by Michael Brendan
"Terrific visual style and good performances cast a good light on 'Black'"
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* * 1/2 (out of four stars)--
I recently had a conversation with a colleague regarding guilty pleasures. "Pitch Black," the latest crackerjack thriller from director David ("The Arrival") Twohy is one I can add to my list. After all, it offers nothing on the screenplay level, but it sure looks good and contains a couple decent central performances. It's constructed more like an amusement park ride than a film. Fortunately, there are just enough good visual effects occupying the screen to divert attention away from the absence of any originality.In the distant future, a transport spaceship is forced to make an emergency crash landing on a desolate planet. All but one of the ship's crew is killed, the exception being the docking
pilot, Fry (Radha Mitchell). A few passengers survive, including an Islamic drifter (Keith David), an antique dealer (Louis Fitz-Gerald), a bounty hunter (Cole Hauser), and his prisoner (Vin Diesel). The planet's surface is being burned to desolation by the heat of three suns, yet it is the terror lurking in the tunnels and caverns below ground that threatens the lives of those not taken by the crash. To the horror of the survivors, an eclipse is about to plunge the planet into total
darkness, allowing the nocturnal creatures to roam free and feed on the living human flesh occupying the surface.
Unlike some other screenwriter-turned-directors,
Twohy is a terrific visual artist. He shoots the daylight scenes through a grainy filter, giving the land a dry, lifeless quality. It is also a spectacular sight when the survivors look
up into the sky and are direct witness to the planets as they conform to block all the suns' light. I'm a sucker for images like that, and the movie has several.
The cast is filled not with big-name stars, but actors good enough to achieve that status one day. The best performance comes from Vin ("Boiler Room","Saving Private Ryan") Diesel as
Riddick, the vicious prisoner who, on his way to permanent incarceration, is now faced with a dilemma - he knows what the crew is up against and that they must stick together to have a
chance at survival, yet he isn't sure if he can (or should) trust those who need his help. It is not in him to trust. Diesel does an excellent job creating a person who is clearly evil, yet is also quite cognizant of what is going on around him. Also good is Radha ("High Art","Love and Other Catastrophies") Mitchell as Fry, the docking pilot who contemplates some questionable decisions early in the film, then must deal with her guilt throughout the story.I suppose it all depends on your expectations entering the theatre. The movie is a technical marvel (the sound effects editing is absolutely phenomenal), but one thin on originality. For me, the look of the movie is enough... at least, enough to qualify as a guilty pleasure. There's nothing wrong with that.
link directly to this review at http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=1801&reviewer=202
originally posted: 03/14/00 22:46:18
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Trilogy Starters: For more in the Trilogy Starters series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2016 Boston SciFi Film Festival For more in the 2016 Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
18-Feb-2000 (R)
DVD: 01-Jun-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
18-May-2000
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