| Pitch Black (2000) |
| CAST: Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Keith David, Claudia Black
DIRECTOR: David N. Twohy MPAA RATING: R RUNNING TIME: 107 Minutes STUDIO: USA Entertainment |
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The opening scene is hectic and very confusing. From what I can tell through all of the shaky camera movements, a bad cgi-looking ship carrying passengers is crashing. The ship makes a not-so-safe landing on a mysterious planet that has 3 suns. On board the crew is a prisoner named Riddick (Vin Diesel). He appears to be the only threat to the other crew members, until they encounter the planet's tenants, who just happen to be bad cgi-looking creatures that reminded me of the Starship Troopers bugs. Only these have wings.
So, there you have it. A flimsy plot to one of the worst sci-fi films I have ever seen in my entire life. We get introduced, briefly, to the cast. It's basically a group of no-names. Once you hear each one of them say their first line of dialogue, you will quickly find yourself hoping they'll get eaten quickly by the alien creatures. The only, and I mean only, glimmer of entertainment is Diesel, who most audiences will recognize as one of the guys in Saving Private Ryan. The rest of the crew is alien meat. Diesel, who sports the coolest looking pair of eyes ever shown on screen, is the only one who can lead the crew safely past the creatures. The problem is can they trust an escaped con to help them? Who cares? This movie is so boring that all you'll have on your mind are rolling credits. The biggest complaint that I can see is that you can't see...anything. Almost every shot after the first 15 minutes is pure darkness. I suspect the filmmakers did this to hide their crappy cgi creatures. No computer-animated monster looks bad when you can hardly see them, especially up close. Most of the shots of the creatures in daylight are far away, and you can easily tell that the crew is looking up at a green wall. In the end, this comes off as a really bad B-movie. Usually you can have fun with a cheesy sci-fi flick, but not this one. There is no fun to be had here. Nothing in the movie is original. It's all borrowed ideas from other sci-fi movies. The cast is bad, the sets are bad, the effects are bad, and the bad-looking creatures aren't scary at all. When you see a cast as cardboard as this one, you immediately root for the bad guy. But when even the bad guy is as fake as the cast members, the only thing you can root for are the credits. Had Supernova not opened in January, Pitch Black would have the royal honor of being the 1st terrible sci-fi film in the new millennium. On the other hand, being the 2nd worst of the new millennium isn't too shabby. |