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For those of you who didn’t catch 2000’s “Pitch Black” by the same director (David Twohy), it was an exciting and, more notably, smart sci-fi action film starring Vin Diesel as the man with a bazillion plans: Richard B. Riddick. Not too cool of a name, right? Well, don’t let that fool you because for Riddick, it’s “insulting” to have to fight only four measly people. (Or in this case an army of Necromongers, a fascist country who want nothing but the universe and try to accomplish that mission by “converting” everyone.)
I would actually not like these Necromongers, if in fact the hero of the film wasn’t as fascist and evil as they are. Yes, I know the film starts with the voice-over of a character named Aereon saying, “In normal times, evil should be fought by good, but in times like this, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil.” But the thing that strikes me is...what is so different about this conflict that it partitions itself from every other one? They failed to explain that. So, not counting the cornball dialogue, Riddick is just as easily hated as the bad guys. (I must add that when he says things like “pull over this!” I hate him even more. The dialogue is laughably bad.)
Where this film could’ve won me over was in the action sequences, which is where I found refuge in films like “XXX” (notice that Mr. Diesel is in that one too). If the story was dumb, at least I had some eye-candy. But this film is always making us realize that there are effects everywhere. If they want it all to look real...we shouldn’t notice it.
The only plausibly good action in the film is ruined by what must be multi-colored strobe lights, and an uncontrollable camera that shakes and rattles so much that I found myself rubbing my eyes because they hurt. It’s almost like these filmmakers were so sure that this was going to be horrible that they put in some flashy moments to win over the young children who have no inkling what is happening, but like it anyway. Oh, wait, no one will really know what is going on anyway, so it doesn’t even matter.
Twohy seems to want to skip to the action before his lets us understand why we’re here to see the film in the first place. I try to pay attention to all the films I watch, but this just lost me right off the bat. Or maybe that was because I was about to fall asleep. Whatever you thought was good about “Pitch Black” will likely be stepped on by this film...and by the end, you’ll have to shake your date back to consciousness. * ½