Enjoyable film with interesting characters

Rating: 8/10 (7 June 2012)

Pitch black tells the story of a group of 12 people who survive a forced landing on a deserted planet. It's about survival and trying to escape a hostile environment. This plot has been used often before, and one could compare this film to The Thing or the Alien quadrilogy. What makes this film work are well written characters and great casting.
This particular group of people consists of individuals with widely varying backgrounds and mentality, which makes trust a big issue. Not only do they have to deal with the situation being stranded on a strange planet but the biggest threat could be their fellow survivors. You can really feel the anxiety building up during the movie which is augmented with a number of highly tensional scenes between characters.
As mentioned earlier the characters are what makes this a good film. Early in the movie the audience gets to know the characters enough to have feelings for them. Vin Diesel plays one of the main roles as Riddick, the physically strong, bad ass, prisoner, anti-hero, who still seems to have some leftovers of humanity. Cole Hauser plays Johns, a mercenary with a medical drug habit, who is responsible for Riddick, and the tension between those two is exciting to follow. Then we have Radha Mitchell playing the vice-captain of the ship who has to step up as a kind of a leader and keep the group together, while struggling with her own conscience. Other characters get less attention but are important, the most memorable ones are three Islamists who believe god is responsible for every happening but have to admit that god isn't always nice even if you pray; Jack, a boy with a secret and a rare items collector who is not exactly the kind of person you would pick in your survival team.
The cast fits very well into the characters; they look believable in their roles. Especially Riddick, who comes off as a bad person but still you oddly start to care for him. You get really drawn into the storyline and can easily picture yourself there with the survivals. It has a nice build up where you get to know the characters as they try to understand the planet they find themselves stuck on, followed by some faster-paced, exhilarating scenes where you don't want to look away. There are no scenes in particular that stand out, but you can find some clever dialogues.
The visual display is nice, with nice looking scenes ranging from intensive scenes happening in complete darkness to very bright POV's. The editing is very tight, including no scenes that don't matter or last way too long. Sometimes you need to do something else while watching, but this is not the case with this film
To summarize this review: This is a film that no fan of Sci-fi movies should miss, or anyone who enjoys action thrillers in general. Not the most memorable of movies but who was expecting that? A good movie with a great cast and interesting characters.
In one word: "verymuchenjoyable". - 8/10