Pitch Black----rapt in its own darkness...

Title:
Pitch Black (C-)
Actors:
Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Lewis Fits-gerald
Director:
David Twohy
Story and Screenplay:
Ken and Jim Wheat and David Twohy
Editor / Music:
Rick Shaine / Graeme Revell
Design / Photography:
Grace Walker / David Egby
Producer:
Tom Engelman, Anthony Winley
Studio:
Universal



In the middle of the controversial meet-up of Vin Diesel and Andrea del Rosario, I decided to watch this movie. Due to my lack of resourcefulness I didn’t realize when I made a review for Chronicles of Riddick that it is actually a sequel for this movie. Now I’m caught up in the middle. Just how can I possibly decided which is worse? I’ll save the verdict for later.

From the moment I heard Vin Diesel’s straight from the grave tone, my action-flick alert immediately kicked into high gear. I remember the first line very clearly. “They say most of the brain sets down on cry or sleep, all but the primitive side------ the animal side”. Ohhkaaayyy. If these words were uttered by my former Biology teacher (who sadly have no life besides teaching the study of life) I would have instantly considered it a science trivia. But when Vin said it, I immediately thought it was bogus. Just shows how much credibility he possesses.

The movie’s all about this sorta shipping plane and its passenger who unexplainably encountered some technical problems that led to their crash into a planet which is surrounded by sand and three suns. It’s too hot, there’s no water, they have no ship and they have a felon on the loose. Just how grim can their situation be? But there is hope; they found a nerd’s camp in the middle of the desert and nobody seems to own it. Oh, wait, if the ship is here and nobody’s here, where did they go? I wanted to raise my hand and say they evaporated. But they did not, apparently there were creatures of the dark, and the convict they planned to kill end up to be their knight in swimming goggles.



I heard it straight from Vin, that the hardest part in making this movie is not the action sequence, but the contact lenses. Yes, my friends he’s wearing contacts here! He’s such a big boy to blubber over a pair of gels in his eyes. Just how difficult can it be? Does the color make it much harder? Given the chance I would love to try it, just to see how I’d look like if I have glow in the dark eyes.

This movie is poor in everything. If there’s one thing commendable about it, is its characters’ consistency--- in being stupid. Just imagine, you know that there are creatures of the night ready to make a meal out of you and what did they do? They waited for the suns to almost all be out before they drove their solar powered car to get the energy they need to run the ship. And you know what happens next.

This is no better than any crappy slasher movies. One by one the petty characters start to die until the love team is the only one they have left. It’s quite enjoyable to watch as each of them gets masticated by the odd looking no-name creatures of the no-name planet. If I’m the king of the universe I would have named the planet Sandy and the creatures Munchies for obvious reasons—it sounds cute.



If I’m still in touch with my favorite high school teacher and she reads this, she might go to Lacuna’s and have the procedure performed (Eternal Sunshine remember???) to effectively wipe me out from her memoirs. She was pretty defensive when she read my not-so-great review of Riddick and said that Vin did that movie cuz it’s where the money is, apparently it’s not. Surprising, but yes. Moviemakers are starting to be smart enough to know that Riddick don’t deserve another chance. It only bagged a little over $60M in the US, if I’m not mistaken.

I did like one thing about this movie, Radha. She’s very pretty and well she can act, hopefully she’ll be given a role where she can really show it. The direction sucks as much as the editing does. It’s almost close to the way we make action sequences here. If that’s the case, it surely is alarming.



To answer my query earlier, I think this one sucks more. Because at least on the Chronicles of Riddick, there was an attempt to characterize, I didn’t say they succeeded, but at least they attempted.

photos © by USA Films