Pitch Black - 5Star

By Jason Best
( What's on TV )
published

Vin Diesel's at home in the pitch black

A striking sci-fi with Vin Diesel as a tough guy to savour. 4/5 stars

Diesel, in one of his key breakthrough roles to stardom, sparks up director David Twohy’s great-looking sci-fi chiller.

He’s a convict who proves a force to reckon with after the spaceship he's travelling in crash-lands on a hostile planet where nasty flesh-eating beasties come out at night - and, as luck would have it, there's a solar eclipse on the way…

Diesel, Radha Mitchell and a handful of other bickering, disposable survivors fight for their lives while the film delivers eye-catching special effects and gory shocks aplenty.

Diesel reprised his role in 2004’s The Chronicles of Riddick and 2013’s Riddick.

Jason Best
Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.