Subject: Review: Pitch Black (2000)

From: [email-masked] (Shannon Patrick Sullivan)
Date: 17 Mar 2000 03:54:57 GMT

PITCH BLACK (2000) / *

Directed by David Twohy. Screenplay by Jim Wheat, Ken Wheat and Twohy.
Starring Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser. Running time: 108
minutes. Rated AA for offensive language and violent scenes. Reviewed on
March 16th, 2000.

By SHANNON PATRICK SULLIVAN

My first exposure to "Pitch Black" came when the preview was played in 
front of "Girl, Interrupted" a month and a half ago. The preview hinted 
at monsters which lived on a sun-drenched planet but could only come out 
in the darkness. Then: "an eclipse!" How convenient, I thought; I could 
see the whole movie playing out in my mind. I held out some hope that 
the filmmakers might surprise me, but sadly, actually watching "Pitch 
Black" did not prove to be a revelatory experience. "Pitch Black" is 
indeed as improbable, formulaic and predictable as its preview implies.

The film is set sometime in the future. Men travel the stars in enormous 
ships, cryogenically frozen for the duration of the voyage. One such 
spaceship is knocked off course and crashlands, killing all but 
a handful of the passengers and crew. The survivors include docking pilot 
Caroline Fry (Radha Mitchell), uneasy with authority and plagued by 
self-doubts; no-nonsense mercenary William Johns (Cole Hauser); and 
Richard Riddick (Vin Diesel), a convicted murderer.

The planet on which they are marooned has three suns, and as a result is 
a dry, blasted terrain without plants or water. Soon, though, the 
survivors discover evidence of a previous human expedition to the planet 
which appears to have been violently wiped out. The culprits soon become 
obvious: in underground caverns live hideous creatures which thrive in 
darkness and emerge onto the planet's surface only during a total solar 
eclipse, which in a feat of mathematical and physical improbability 
occurs like clockwork every twenty-two years. Of course, the cycle is 
almost up and soon the survivors find themselves under assault from wave 
upon wave of the terrifying, merciless monsters which are almost 
invisible in the pervasive darkness. Their only hope lies with the 
enigmatic Riddick, whose eyes have been surgically altered to permit him 
to see in the dark.

Convenient indeed. But to be fair, films have to be permitted a certain 
degree of latitude when it comes to such coincidences; without them, in 
many cases there just wouldn't be much of a movie. This is particularly 
true of science-fiction movies, which are so totally dependent on the 
imagined and the improbable to begin with. But such a leap of faith would 
be far easier to make if it were in the service of an entertaining movie. 
"Pitch Black" simply is not.

The entire movie is little more than one long, drawn-out chase scene. The 
characters have to get from Point A to Point B while avoiding the 
monsters, and there isn't much more to "Pitch Black" than that. The 
movie is punctuated only by a few token nods to character development, as 
well as the obligatory deaths which occur with almost comical timing. It 
is so easy to forecast right from the start the identity of those 
characters who survive to the end, it's criminal. This is a classic 
example of writing by the numbers; the screenplay by Jim Wheat, Ken Wheat 
and director David Twohy could just as easily have been generated by a 
computer program, it is so routine.

The best aspect of "Pitch Black" is the computer-animated special effects. 
There are some beautiful shots of the spaceship cruising past the rings 
of a Saturn-like planet, and of the onset of the solar eclipse. The 
monsters are also well-designed, although they do seem to owe something 
to "Alien". Twohy at least has the presence of mind to keep the monsters 
mostly out of sight for much of the film, adding to their sense of menace.
Even when they are fully unveiled, the lighting and camerawork keeps them 
indistinct. It's a shame, then, that "Pitch Black" utilizes them in such 
tired, unimaginative situations. They hammer against doors. They follow 
the party just out of sight in the darkness. They pop out of nowhere in an 
apparently empty corridor. There aren't many genuine frights here, and 
even the rare creepy moments are obvious and predictable.

Part of the movie's problem is that it develops few sympathetic 
characters to generate viewer interest. I found it difficult to be 
absorbed into the atmosphere of terror "Pitch Black" attempts to generate 
when I had absolutely no emotional investment in the characters 
whatsoever. I think it says something about the movie that of the three 
principals, the most sympathetic is the mass murderer, Riddick. Sort of a 
hunky Hannibal Lecter with super-powers, Diesel does a good job of making 
Riddick an intriguing anti-hero while not forgetting that he is, after 
all, still a criminal. Mitchell and Hauser, meanwhile, struggle futilely 
with their unmemorable, unlikeable characters. The rest of the ragtag 
band is largely forgettable, although Keith David does what he can with the 
underdeveloped role of the spiritual Imam.

"Pitch Black" is a dismal and tedious exercise in moviemaking, failing 
even to provide the requisite thrills and chills, let alone living up to 
the enormous potential of the science-fiction genre. Sci-f provides 
filmmakers with the opportunity to exercise the entire breadth of their 
vision and creativity, to do things no other genre permits. It is all the 
more unfortunate, then, to see a movie like "Pitch Black" dismiss this 
opportunity in favor of the banal and the ordinary. While the characters 
spend the entire movie running around the deathtrap planet, the audience 
is well advised to run in only one direction: away from the theater. 
Either that, or go into cryogenic sleep until "Pitch Black" is over.

Copyright © 2000 Shannon Patrick Sullivan.
Archived at http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/movies/PitchBlack.html

--
  _______________________________________________________________________
 / Shannon Patrick Sullivan  | "We are all in the gutter, but some of us \
|                            |  are looking at the stars."                |
 \ [email-masked] |                            -- Oscar Wilde /