Dank, Rank Sci-Fi

Rating: 6/10 (30 March 2001)

This tale of futuristic space travelers crash-landing on a planet and battling vicious beasts that are afraid of light suffers from undeveloped characters, phony special effects and enough plot holes to fill a spacial black hole. Vin Diesel, while a good actor, reads with a too-sophisticated Greenwich village New York theater background that belies his character's psychopathic origins. Radha Mitchell makes no impression as the spaceship's gutsy female captain. Cole Hauser over-acts outrageously as a bounty hunter. The computer-driven special effects are, as usual, cartoon-ish and unbelievable. One character escapes from a cave with a can of worms, literally, (or florescent slugs) which the monsters resist. Other characters are so disposible we feel nothing when they are banished. To see how this type of film is done most competently, see the "Alien" series.