Wonderful in Its Way

Rating: 9/10 (22 June 2002)

Who's soul is so dead that they can't respond to a really fine monster sci-fi movie?
The critics were luke warm and the box office wasn't that good either. Bah! What do they know.
The opening sequence is simply great cinema. Like the recent Mission to Mars and Red Planet the space ship runs into a meteor shower in the first frame and must land on the nearby planet(this plot device I hereby declare off limits for the next ten years). Of the three films, Pitch Black handles this event by far the best. This is real exciting movie making reminiscent of the plane crash in Alive! or even the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan. It's that good.
The alien planet and the monsters have real punch. It's true that ecologically speaking both make no sense whatsoever, but you must overlook that little detail just like you overlooked all the extra water in Waterworld. Pitch Black is miles better than Waterworld.
One of the joys of this film is that it stars mostly unknowns. It introduces the new star Vin Diesel. He is dynamite. He just oozes menace. In Waterworld the over exposed and ever so sensitive and sympathetic Kevin Costner tried to make us believe he could be cold and heartless. It didn't work. There is some internal resource that Costner lacks that mere acting can't simulate. In the old days Robert Mitchum could do menace. Robert De Niro has made a big career out of his small allocation of natural menace. Diesel is the real thing.
This is essentially a 1950's style "B" movie made with state of the art special effects and excellent production values. Just great. A hoot.