Paint it black

Rating: Null/10 (13 August 2001)

I love a good cliche. Like, "we'll head 'em off at the pass." Someone got their foot shot off in a Mel Brooks movie just for uttering it. So this film gets off to a good start by having the captain of the spaceship blow up. And the ship's entire supply of toilet paper? Ooh, that's a tempting one, but we'll have to cross off a few more prominent cliches first, like frenetic cutting which makes the first ten minutes confusing. Who's who and who's where? This sort of constant controlling of the eye dissipates tension through out the film.
Apparently, the crew have crashed on a desert planet that looks like the Australian outback. So why are so many characters moaning when they have Australian accents? They should feel at home, as should the commander who has the useful surname of 'Fry'. But they do moan, because aliens are going to eat them. Which is another cliche not unlike having an escaped psycho on board. Riddick (for it is he) is played by Vin Diesel who apparently used to be a bouncer. There's a lovely bit where Riddick does a Sumo wrestling dance with an alien who has a blind spot. Now, if it was Mr Diesel himself in this unseemly predicament he could have used his full ammunition : "I'm sorry, Sir, members only. You don't have the right attitude" which is yet another cliche, but useless with aliens. Mr Diesel never finds his character possibly due to the film's blind spot, the script. Instead, he takes an idiosyncratic but not terribly convincing approach which involves looking enigmatic while hitting the same monotonous note over and over again in a gruff voice which makes me think of, well, a night club bouncer: "You can't come in, mate, it's aliens night" which is a coincidence but not a cliche. And speaking of cliches, jailbird psycho's can't just be psycho's anymore, they have to have a bit of breeding and be a bit brainy and existential like Nietzsche (the only philosopher ever to have had a preservation order placed on his beard). I was just waiting for Riddick to say "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger!" It's a cliche that's only being used 2348 times in films like this and I was rather looking forward to it crash landing again. It doesn't, so black mark, writer. Next mistake and It'll be a pitch black mark and then you'll be sorry. We are led to believe that a convicted murderer who has vowed to leave the planet would risk all over a bit of intellectual curiosity over the mind of Ms Fry.
Never mind, the aliens are fun. In his 'Austin Powers' films, the comedian Mike Myers sent up the fact that the British have bad teeth. I looked at the alien's choppers and then looked at mine in the mirror and he's not wrong about that cliche. But how will the stranded crew, psycho in tow, deal with the aliens during an eclipse so pitch black that you can see the black and ethnic characters even better than the whites? (Don't ask me how, I'm still trying to figure it out). There's an empathy problem here. Amongst the crew, there is a whining Englishman who protests he's meant to die in Paris (anyone who shares my aversion to French films will understand his deeply held belief) and a man who loses two sons without batting an eyelid in grief. I mean, if he doesn't care why does the director expect us to? To be fair, he does get a bit miffed when the third son cops it but perhaps he was a favourite and the others owed him money. Either way, he's a funny chap who, despite being Islamic, speaks vaguely about 'God' rather than Allah, which is perhaps the source of all his misery on the planet.
The last quarter is rather gripping as the survivors make a last desperate dash along a canyon. Will they make it or will the aliens (wait for it, wait for it) head them off at the pass? It's worth a rental to find out as the visuals are very pleasing in that DVD way and the ending is moving and Christian despite not being entirely convincing in terms of credible motivations. The film makers want us to relate to Riddick's road to Damascus like conversion (actually, didn't that end in pitch black, last time?) Never the less, I think the relatives of the pilot he killed would rather he did a bit of time in a cell somewhere. Preferably pitch black. But he turned out cuddly enough for us to maybe toss in a few glow worms.
The producers miss out on that grand cliche of them all, the rock song play out. Okay, pitch black mark. They should have had Mick Jagger and friends wailing over the end titles. Which song? Now come on, there can be only one. Yes, I know it's been used before, but what are cliches for?