Year:
2000
Studio:
Universal Studios/
Interscope Communications
Movie:
3/5
DVD:
4/5
Movie
A space ship carrying 40 passengers suffers an interstellar mishap and
crashlands on a remote planet orbitted by three suns. Surivors include
pilot Fry (Radha Mitchell), bounty hunter Johns (Cole Hauser), escaped
convict Riddick (Vin Diesel) and the Imam (Keith David). Riddick
immediately escapes but the survivors soon find out that there are much
worse things on the planet than a multiple murderer.
The key hook of the movie is that the planet orbits three suns, so it
is always daylight. Except for every 22 years when the planets line up
just right and eclipse all three suns for several weeks. Guess what,
the next eclipse is due any minute now. But it wouldn't be much of a
problem if not for the thousands of vicious carnivores that hate the
light and only come out at night.
The survivors have to band together and — using whatever lights they
can improvise — make a trip to their crashed ship for its battery packs
then drag the batteries back to a small skiff and their only ticket off
this planet. Who will make it and who gets cut up into little
bite-sized morsels? Watch the movie.
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Actors
This is like Vin Diesel's breakout role. This is a small Australian
movie and pretty much the only buzz were the surprisingly cool special
effects and Diesel. From the commentary he sounds like a cool and
fairly smart guy. But he has gotten a bit typecast.
DVD
There are two commentary tracks. The first one with director David
Twohy along with actors Vin Diesel and Cole Hauser. Diesel perhaps
gushes a bit too much but he knows it and doesn't apologize for his
enthusiasm. The second commentary track has Twohy along with producer
Tom Engleman and visual effects supervisor Peter Chiang. Here they
pretty much talk about the special effects and production problems.
Both commentaries are good but a bit sparse at times.
There is a five-minute featurette, some theatrical trailers, production
notes, cast and filmmaker biographies and some commercials. The Rave
World Pitch Black Event is a 20-minute montage from some Pitch Black
raves that were done to promote the movie. Kind of surreal.
Recommendations
Pitch Black is a fairly good science fiction and horror movie. Good
amount of action and suspense and some great visuals. The extra
material is entertaining and informative. I recommend this movie.
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