Viking Night: Pitch Black
By Bruce Hall
May 25, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
If you’ve ever met a movie snob, you’ve met someone who wants everything they see to be sublime, mind blowing, intellectual enlightenment. They expect the same things out of Brett Ratner that they do out of Steven Spielberg. They hold Sylvester Stallone to the same standard as Daniel Day-Lewis. And if they see anything that fails to meet this expectation, they tend to come away disappointed or angry. It’s unfair but true, and such people short change themselves more than they do the system.
Go ahead and turn your nose up at Top Gun and Lethal Weapon. I’ll bet you money you saw them, liked them, and are smiling at the memories right now. We all have our opinions and preferences, but when you narrow your vision to that extent; when you leave out more than you let in you miss out on a lot and worst of all you sometimes forget just to have fun. In fact, I’d argue that it is just as important to occasionally experience things you’d rather avoid than things you already know you like; not only does it keep you informed but you just might find yourself pleasantly surprised! And that’s generally the point of this column; to encourage people to try things they might not have considered before.
In the interest of full disclosure, those who know me best will point out that I’ve yet to write in this space about a movie that I personally dislike, but don’t worry - its coming. But my goal, as always is to make sure that every movie we look at brings more to the table than it takes away – which brings me to David Twohy’s Pitch Black, an often overlooked but quite satisfying sci-fi actioner with more up its sleeve than you think.
Part thriller, part disaster flick and part horror movie, Pitch Black takes advantage of a tried and true formula – stick a disparate group of characters in a fishbowl, give them a common threat for which there is no obvious defense and start killing them off. Set in a futuristic world whose inhabitants are more or less like you and me, Pitch Black begins with the crash of a civilian transport on a desolate planet where there is little hope of rescue.
With no communications, no water and no way to take off again, those left alive are at first simply glad to be in one piece. But after a slightly predictable but well paced setup, they discover that their chances of remaining in one piece are getting smaller by the hour. What they eventually uncover on this barren world is a far more deadly threat than the bad weather, making cooperation essential for survival.
Their alliance is an uneasy one though, as we find a few of the usual genre suspects front and center. As you might expect, we have the token First Fatality (identity omitted), a character who simply sticks his head somewhere the audience immediately knows he shouldn’t. There’s the requisite self serving coward who never seems to be with the program (Lewis Fitz-Gerald) no matter how desperate the situation gets. And what would any contemporary science fiction thriller be without the "tough chick" character (Claudia Black, doing what she was born to do), filled with snarling, ass-kicking vengeance.
I guess I don’t have to warn you not to get too attached to all of these people – but despite most of them being doomed from go, it isn’t necessarily a given which characters are going to make it to the third act. And while not quite a masterpiece of suspense, Pitch Black offers some clever surprises, as well as several relatively compelling relationships that provide depth in unexpected places.
From the start, this is obviously meant to be a vehicle for Vin Diesel, who creates one of the most memorable anti-heroes in recent memory. Richard B. Riddick is a convicted murderer, and the script tries its best to convince us that he might be no more than a garden variety sociopath. And much like Snake Plissken – from whom he can trace his cinematic DNA - Riddick is indeed, shall we say, "morally enigmatic." But of course we soon discover that there’s more to him than meets the eye, and it is his relationship with the rest of the cast that generally propels the film forward.
William Johns (Cole Hauser, who I insist is underrated) is Riddick’s jailor, a man who harbors his own nasty secrets and is both more – and less – than he seems to be. The ship’s pilot (Radha Mitchell) would rather not discuss her role in the accident that stranded them all, and the circle of trust/distrust she shares with Riddick and Johns provides some of the best moments of the film.
A peculiar child among the survivors latches on to Riddick as a role model, perhaps seeing with innocent eyes what we already know – that this man is not quite the mindless savage we’ve been told about. But the most interesting character might be Keith David as Imam al-Walid. A serenely devout Muslim pilgrim, the Imam embodies the film’s central themes, is the group’s unifying force and happens to be the only character with nothing to hide; nothing to run from. Inevitably the Imam compares their predicament to his own religious pilgrimage – a bit of a stretch but it’s a point worth considering. Besides, it’s rare for a science fiction film to even acknowledge the possibility that people in the future might embrace religion just as they do today (think Star Trek’s galactic society of dedicated agnostics). And it is almost as rare for Hollywood to address religion at all in anything approaching a realistic and humane way.
This is one of the things that first struck me about Pitch Black, the fact that such a farfetched and violent film would even attempt to be human. And as a man of God, the Imam (who isn’t exactly three dimensional, but could just as easily have been nothing more than an embarrassing caricature) does come across as very human. At least, he does when standing next to someone like Johns. He is a man who seems at peace with himself and his actions; rather than having been in the midst of crisis when the crash occurred, al-Imam’s journey was one meant to reaffirm unity with his faith.
Still, few of us are this tranquil; for most it takes a crisis to burn away what clouds us and to reveal who and what we truly are. Would you fight to protect a stranger, and perhaps die for them because it’s the noble thing to do? Are you content enough with the life you’ve lived to face death unafraid, or does mortality just remind you how much you’ve left undone? No, these are not new concepts but they’re pretty lofty stuff for a low budget action film, and let’s not get confused here – this is definitely an action film.
There’s a reason Vin Diesel’s face is on the DVD instead of Keith David. And without a doubt, the most satisfying parts of Pitch Black are watching Riddick jack up other living things with his big mouth and his big muscles. Yet unlike most examples of the genre, Pitch Black sticks to the rules, covers the basics but aims just a little bit higher in the substance department. There’s also a reason why such a modestly successful film has become an enduring fan favorite – it hits all the right buttons because it’s a fun ride and it has just a little bit of depth.
All of this just magnifies why the 2004 sequel was such a joyless spectacle. Everything that made Pitch Black unique and appealing was gutted in favor of Riddick himself, slaughtering hordes of laughable video game characters in front of one brooding CGI landscape after another. A story that was meant to be full of sprawling philosophical drama was instead stuffed with nothing more than chaos and clutter. Anything clever and fun left over from the original was obscured by a seas of chattering gunfire and geysers of smoke and blood. That’s a shame, because as compelling a character as Riddick is, as with any anti-hero what that separates him from a true villain is his humanity.
To be fair, Pitch Black certainly suffers from many of the same things as most action films – there are plenty of contrivances meant to keep the characters in danger longer than necessary and logic is occasionally washed away with a rush of adrenaline. But like any successful story it sets goals and exceeds them, puts the bar in place and then passes over it. And by the end of it all, even Riddick changed his mind about who he was.
And you don’t have to be a movie snob to appreciate that.