Eric Y.
ROTTEN TOMATOES
Despite the fact that I prepared myself not to expect too much, I couldn’t help but be excited about this film. After all, it feels like ages since a good sci-fi flick has been released, and Pitch Black had a premise out of the Golden Age of science fiction. It had the Iron Giant in a leading role. And, it held the promise of entertaining us with lots of nasty looking monsters ripping innocent people apart in thousands of entertaining ways.
The film has a lot of nifty things going for it. The visuals and special effects work well in portraying the dead planet the characters find themselves on. Especially notable is how the lighting is handled — all of the outdoor scenes are extremely faded, to the point of being yellow and black. This helps convey the fact that the characters are on a planet that is very alien, and has three suns bearing down on it. And the “monster-cam” was pretty nifty too.
The characters are mostly cut from standard horror film stock: there’s the moron who is destined to die, the minority guy who always dies first, the religious guy, the faceless stock characters who exist to die, and the innocent character who isn’t supposed to die. The primary characters, on the other hand, are a little more fleshed out than the cardboard stock that regularly populate movies of this type. In fact, what really appealed to me is how Riddick (Vin Diesel) isn’t portrayed as a maligned and misunderstood criminal who is really kind at heart (once you get to know him). He is a killer and is portrayed as a killer, a refreshing change for once.
The main problem with the movie was the pacing. The buildup to the realization of the movie’s major threat, the creatures, is too slow. Half the movie is spent plodding around the sand, instead of building up the tension that leads to the climax. Movies like this are unto roller-coasters. There’s the initial steep climb that leads to the top, and then from there a series of loops and stomach bursting surprises, flavored with periods of calm. Each portion of the ride has its place, and shouldn’t be overly long or short. In the case of Pitch Black, too much time is spent on setting up the scenario (i.e. the first part of the roller coaster track, the initial steep climb). At first it’s exhilarating, but after a while, you get impatient.
Of course, one could always view the film as a guilty pleasure movie. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work in that aspect either. Pitch Black tries hard to be a serious film, with it’s character interactions and explorations of the “who’s more evil” theme, and by doing that it ends up losing some of the joie de vivre mayhem characteristic of GPMs (Guilty Pleasure Movies).
All in all, I personally would watch Pitch Black on a matinee showing. It does have a lot of nice features, but ultimately you’re left wanting more.
© 2000 Rotten Tomatoes
Eric ]
