PITCH BLACK
More fun than Maury Povich's boot camp

  Even having to evacuate the theater halfway through couldn't stop me from enjoying this flick, though I won't shy from admitting its faults.  Damn fire alarms - when was the last time you were in the building whose fire alarm was going off for a legitimate reason, eh?

A spacegoing passenger liner (whose trips are long-distance enough to warrant putting everybody in cryosleep) has a close encounter with, I guess, the rings of a gas giant and is punched full of holes.  Yeah, those rings look pretty, but you don't want to fly through them at a significant portion of the speed of light.  The captain's killed, so the second in command (Radha Mitchell), after an unsuccessful attempt to jettison the sleeping passengers to facilitate a smoother landing (that's it, I'm takin' the BUS to Arcturus), crashes the ship onto the surface of one of the planet's moons.  She picked pretty much the worst time ever to land on that particular planet, considering that the carnivorous fauna, kept underground due to an aversion to light, are making plans for a super-smorg on the surface thanks to an impending solar eclipse.

Along for the ride is a Muslim priest (Keith David) and some juvenile followers, a heavily restrained convict (Vin Diesel) who (natch) is more dangerous than your worst nightmares (who is suddenly looked upon as a role model by one kid), and the con's keeper (Cole Hauser).  And a few others with a nice assortment of accents, all the better to clarify just who it is getting snacked on at any particular time.  Get yer bibs.

Director David Twohy previously directed 1996's The Arrival, which was an enjoyably smart SF thriller in a season loaded with really mindless ones.  Pitch Black doesn't have half the brains of The Arrival, but it's every bit as fun, and even the least of the cast here is way better than Charlie Sheen.

Twohy gives it his all, and gives us a number of really fabulous shots - the planetrise on the alien moon, for example, something one sees a lot in paintings adorning the cover of science magazines but I can't think of many movies which give us a sight like this.  There are also two really astounding "money shots" - one involving what appear to be trees, and the other involving an expectorated gout of flame, unfortunately given away in the ads.  Filmed in Australia, the desert locations (with any number of alien elaborations) are exploited well, and assisted by the bleached look of the cinematography, reminding me a bit of Three Kings.

He handles the action scenes very well - despite the totally unnecessary (and quite silly) de-windshielding of the spacecraft, that crash sequence at the beginning is thrilling.  Later encounters between the humans and the beasts are exciting and creepy - Twohy knows that beasts unseen are more unsettling than the ones which are right in front of you, especially when they're CGI.  Most of what we see of these creatures are through the strange night-vision of Diesel, who can see in the dark.  Extra points must be given for the film's straight-up presentation, as well; it's not without a sense of humor, but it's serious about delivering its thrills, and only rarely tries to dilute them with one-liners and chuckles.

Everybody here does their duty - that is, to drag themselves through the events of the film until they get eaten.  It's a bonus that at least two of the characters turn out to be quite different from what they originally appear.  (and a bigger bonus that another character DOESN'T fall into the cliché of turning out to be that different from the first impression given)  Easily stealing the show is Diesel (that name sounds so made-up), who could carry the role on his voice alone, which is at once gravelly, muted and resonant.  He's got the physical presence too, though that jowly chin of his is kind of distracting.

The science part of this science-fiction movie leaves more than a bit to be desired; that a barren world orbiting three (yes, three) suns would have a stable enough climate to evolve any life at all is a stretch, life this complex, moreso.  And, of course, what's oxygen doing on a barren planet?  But complaints like this are silly nitpicking - the only serious science-flaw I find here is the design of the alien creatures.  Just why would a tunneling, subterranean animal have a head that wide?  Poor bastards must get stuck down there all the time.

As for plot, I've got questions, but to be fair, I missed a few minutes during that evacuation.  (to those who WEREN'T at the 4:15 showing at Eau Claire in Calgary - and that should be at least four or five of you - you're invited to tell me just what happened between the little-flying-creature-attack-in-the-dome and when Diesel and Mitchell have that conversation in the cockpit)  I have no idea just what it is Diesel's character was convicted of (another character later refers to triage, and Diesel says "When I did that, they called it murder.").  I'm still not clear on just who Diesel's protégé is in relation to everybody else.  I have no idea how often these solar eclipses happen to this sun-scorched planet - probably rarely enough to suppose that the creatures' natural habitat is underground, though the ability to fly probably doesn't often come in handy down there.  And for that matter, what DID happen to the inhabitants of the "abandoned" outpost they come across?

But things move quickly, and people are knocked off in not quite the order one might expect.  You'll probably be surprised by just who survives at the end, and who doesn't.  Yeah, there are some dumb parts (like the handy appearance of some phosphorescent grubs), and maybe it's just the fault of the fire alarm but things seemed to lose momentum in the second half.  No matter though; while it pushes no boundaries and breaks no new ground, Pitch Black has a lot of fun nestled firmly in its niche.

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