Facing the Crepuscular Light of Abandonment

Rating: Null/10 (4 September 2000)

Consider the principles of good cinema, whatever they may be. Consider the principles of good science fiction, whatever they may be. This film combines both in what I could only describe as sterling stuff.
Without enumerating whatever those independent principles might be, I outline the combinatorial elements of what I took to be determinative of a most excellent cinematic experience.
Firstly, the script, punctuated as it was with economy and precision, used its futuristic scenario as nothing more or less than a backdrop against which to explore that most perennial of cinematic concerns, the human condition and the extreme circumstance under which it could persevere and prevail.
As if it was not accomplishment enough for this film to deliver us a convincing and gripping treatment of the fears and motivations of its key protagonists, we are by the end sensitized to the radical possibility either of our own abandonment by others or, equally existential, our abandonment of others.
The development of this theme, and its interplay between both Fry and Johns, then Riddick and Fry, was moving. Testament to the originality of the script to the last, we were presented not with an affirmation of Fry's resolve but with its negation, that, with Riddick in her saving arms, she "said she would die for *them*, not for *him*." She then dies for him.
The cinematography and acoustic, without a single extraneous content, was also quite awesome.
Utopia, 1 Sept, 2 Sept.