Stop Kidding Yourselves

Rating: Null/10 (30 April 2003)

I must admit that I went into this movie thinking that it was going to be god awful and quite frankly a joke, and I'm surprised and pleased to be able to say that it was neither. But when people claim that it is complex and cutting edge they are simply kidding themselves. This movie is simply a particular well done modern 'B movie'. And lets not pretend that Vin Diesel portrayed a deep character with conflicting emotions, etc. Vin Diesel's performance was decent and utilitarian; just because the writer called for him 'not to talk most of the time' doesn't meen that he should get all this credit for possessing some incredible eye for character psychology.
The overall plot is the absolute standard scifi: land on alien planet and discover some horrible secret through the people who are there or the remains of the people who died there. This has been the default scifi plot since the earliest scifi days and is probably the plot for 4/5 of all Star Trek episodes. Although the concept of the staying in the light thing seems reasonably original enough I will give the movie some credit.
The inclusion of the 'unique characters' like the Muslims is hardly ground breaking. The writer simply needed to include a mystic/religious grandfather figure (the main muslim guy) and some fodder for the monsters to kill before they started killing the real characters (the muslim kids with him). [Admit it, you knew from the beginning that those annoying kids were gonna die.]
However the movie is worth seeing, just ignore the standard scifi plot holes and try to forget that some of these reviewers said that Vin Diesel is a good actor. [I love ol' Vinny D. more than you know but I admit that he is a terrible actor.]