Oops -- WOW! -- Oops.

Rating: 7/10 (27 February 2000)

Pitch Black opens with a long, slo-mo shot of a spaceship gliding by the camera. Oops #1: obvious Star Wars rip-off. It then presents us with a most improbable crash scene, in which the force of the landing blows out the ship's windshield but leaves the pilot remarkably unscathed. Oops #2. The crash scene is edited with MTV-on-Speed cuts, which are both impossible to follow and headache-inducing. Oops #3. By the time the spaceship actually touched down, I was regretting losing $4 on this movie.
Fortunately, things pick up speed in the middle. The visuals are gorgeous -- our heroes are on a planet with three suns, and the scenes are filmed in gorgeous washed-out blue and gold tones. The deceptively calm surface of the planet serves as a backdrop for introducing and fleshing out characters, who are all given more depth than your average cheap sci-fi cast. The tension climaxes with a gorgeous triple eclipse and the awakening of the underground dwellers of the planet, who look like a cross between Ridley Scott's Alien and a hammerhead shark. As the characters scurried around huddling behind their meager and failing light sources, bickering with each other, the suspense was thick enough that it was hard to breathe.
Unfortunately, the last half hour abandons any notion of story arc or plot in favor of killing of characters at random and twisting the plot in improbable directions. The most interesting character, Vin Diesel's hulking homicidal maniac, is reduced to arm-wrestling the aliens and spouting Batman and Robin quality dialog. By the last twist and the by-the-numbers ending, I was disappointed in the movie again.
Out of the movie's two hours, the middle hour is great and the surrounding hour is average to horrid. 50% is generally an F, but for the great visuals I'll give it a C.