Good, effective Sci-Fi/Thriller...

Rating: 7/10 (19 February 2000)

We begin with the standard view of a ship drifting through space. A voice-over gives us a little background as we're slowly taken into the ship. Comet fragments begin piercing the hull(and one or two people) and the cryogenicly frozen crew is woken. So begins the ship's decent. During that decent the pilot(Mitchell) attempts to jettison the passenger section in order to land safely, but a malfunction prevents her from doing so. Nevertheless, they manage to make a rather ugly emergency landing(played out with awesome visual effects). The Captain is one of the unfortunate souls who dies in the crash. Now that everything's calming down, the passengers begin to assess their situation(not at all promising). Given that the planet has three suns(it's a giant desert, basically), some of them set out looking for water and stumble upon an abandoned mining outpost. A survey turns up no signs of life, just a lot of solar powered machinery and another(functioning) ship. Obviously they have a way off the planet. Kind of odd, though. Why would someone prep an evac ship and then abandon it?
The setup is probably the greatest asset of "Pitch Black". A standard Sci-Fi plot, heightened by the pacing of Twohy and a few genuine people mixed in with the fodder, is all it takes to create a good, if unexceptional, Thriller.
As I mentioned, the setup is superb, building tension by developing the current and forthcoming situations. For instance, the clues to the miners' disappearing: the final update in the research logs occurring 22yrs ago; the mobile that shows the alignment of the planets to be a 22yr cycle; the preped ship; the numerous animal carcasses scattered about. They all lead one to the conclusion that the miners didn't simply disappear, and that whatever happened 22yrs ago is about to happen again.
The films only major fallback is the hyper-active camera movement of Twohy. I don't know about you, but I got tired of it during the crash, but that's not to say he doesn't do a good job of putting the film together. On the contrary, he paces everything perfectly. He does a wonderful job with the latter half, where all the action is shrouded in darkness. The problem is, he doesn't change his tactics much in the light. Though there are some impressive visuals(kudos to Eggby for the beautiful coloring) Twohy never seems to take full advantage of his landscape. This is just a difference of artistic opinion, though. The only real complaint I have is the sometimes shaky camera work. It's become a trend of the Action genre in recent years and I don't care for it. Used sparingly, it can work, but constant use(like the crash) looks haphazard.
The final examination is of the actors and their characters. To be honest, I don't expect much from this genre in terms of acting, but every once in a while I'm pleasantly surprise. This is one of those times. The majority of the cast is expendable, so their characters aren't given any attention. On the other hand, there's the three leads, Mitchell, Diesel, and Hauser. Mitchell was willing to kill the passengers at the beginning of the film and she's faced with a similar choice later. Diesel plays a murderer who wants to get out alive as much as everyone else. It's not the typical "bad guy turned good guy" scenario we've seen countless times before. Instead, we have man who's struggling with the idea of leaving the rest of them to die, or risking his own life and it's not as predictable as you'd think. Last, we have Hauser, a drug addicted bounty hunter who's caught Diesel after chasing him for years. Their history will come into play, as well.
All together, "Pitch Black" is worth at least a matinee viewing. If nothing else you're going to enjoy it. Good Sci-Fi films are rare these days and it'd be a shame to miss this one.