The Film: Pitch Black, 2000
The Principals: Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Keith David, Claudia Black, Rhiana Griffith, Lewis Fitz-Gerald.
The Premise: The crew and passengers of a space transport crash land on an arid planet with perpetual daylight due to the presence of three suns in the solar system. One of the passengers is Riddick (Diesel), a convicted murderer being transported to a slam (a maximum security prison) by Johns (Hauser), a bounty hunter. The group soon discovers that there’s a pending eclipse that occurs once every 22 years. When that happens, the planet will be overrun by nocturnal predatory aliens and Riddick, who has the ability to see in the dark, will be their only hope for survival.
“Yeah, you still got that Silent Hill stink on you…”
Is it Good: Hell yes, for multiple reasons, not the least of which are Diesel’s career-making performance and David Twohy’s inventive script and colorful (literally at times) direction. Twohy is a solid director, but I really dig his screenplays, as he can has a good sense of character, tension and pacing in a lot of his material. I was hooked on the premise of this movie before I knew that much about either Twohy or Diesel and wasn’t disappointed in the least once I saw it. Pleasantly surprised in fact.
As for Diesel, Riddick is still his signature role and I’m hoping he finds more of the acting as opposed to the movie star element of his career. There’s still part of me that thinks another Boiler Room or Iron Giant is out there with his name on it. And yeah, you can count me as one of those schlubs who’s looking for that third Riddick film (hopefully with Nick Chinlund). Necromonger bookends aside, I geeked on the second act of Chronicles. Director’s cut definitely worked better on that one.
Not often, but every once in a while, Hauser still has one of those disturbing Paparazzi flashbacks about the naked, coked-up Sizemore/Baldwin tag team sneaking up on him…
But Pitch Black was where the character dazzled, with Riddick’s “don’t mess with me and I won’t mess with you, but mess with me and you’ll get your wig split” mentality. Riddick in this movie was one of the genuine badasses in recent memory, without requiring either slo mo nor chop cutting action scenes to get the job done. Diesel simply radiated ominousness here. Supporting work by Cole Hauser and especially Radha Mitchell were also good.
Then you’ve got the hammerheads, fun little playmates that also didn’t disappoint in the creature department. Perfect foils for Riddick.
Is it Worth a Look: 10 years later, yep.
And yet another Farscape fan beholds Claudia Black…
Random Anecdotes: Chock full of one-liners and tasty dialogue o’plenty:
“Where’s Johns?” “Which half?”
“It’s the winner of the lookalike contest.”
“The ones [whispers] telling me to go for the sweet spot just to the left of the spine…”
“It’s a metallic taste, human blood…copperish. If you cut it with Peppermint Schnapps, that goes away.”
“Did not know who he was fuckin’ with.”
Copperish indeed.
Cinematic Soulmates: Blade, Alien, and for some reason, The Defiant Ones.
10 comments
yuck — terrible movie..
What's in the Director's Cut of Chronicles that makes it worth a revisit? More prison stuff?
No mention of the fact that it's basically a sci-fi update of STAGECOACH? (Not that I don't like it, the movie is a blast.)
Fantastic low budget sci-fi, out of left field and though it has some flaws in places, (Keith David yelling "noooo as the shawshank camera looks down on him, though the sound on this dialogue was obviously silenced) it is still a cult classic in its own right.
I've grown more forgiving of this movie, in part because Chronicles was full of such entertaining excess that I started to see how Riddick could be a fun franchise character. As a stand-alone bit of sci-fi, horror or any other kind of storytelling, though, this movie is awful. I left the theater angry.
Good movie. Don't know what they hell happened with the sequel. Pitch Black was solidly rooted in Sci-Fi, but Chronicles rolled in all this Fantasy bullshit that it became unwatchable. What the hell was Judy Dench doing in that movie? Where the producers holding her family hostage?
Cracking film – great performances all round, does a huge amount with what little they had to work with budget wise. A Sci-Fi classic.
not sure how its a terrible movie #1.. its paced just right, could have been bogged down by unecessary backstory and scifi jargon but it presents itself as is and moves on with or without you.. good stuff 🙂
Pitch Black is highly overrated.
Yup. Well done character role expectation reversals and great aesthetics to boot, this is one of the best creature features from the last decade no doubt. Almost up there with The Host, The Mist, and an my fave, The Descent.
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