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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.

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