Brian Vs. Movies

It all starts here.  And by "all," I mean the current generation of action heroes.  Pitch Black (sometimes retroactively titled The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black) was the first starring role for Vin Diesel after a string of ensemble films, and the first one that showed him doing much of anything that tough guys normally do in movies.  At this point, though, Diesel was an unproven box office draw and action star, so it was a little strange to see him again in Pitch Black, which is much more science fiction-y than I remembered.  But going against expectations can be a good thing, right?  Right...?

In the far-flung future, a passenger spaceship is damaged by the debris from a comet that they passed too close to and is forced to crash land on the closest planet.  The good news is that, among the survivors, the one crew member that survived was the pilot, Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell), so they can feasibly fly off the planet if the ship is repaired or a replacement is found.  The bad news is that the planet is a vast desert with no signs of life; the only indications that humans have ever been on this planet are some decades-old machinery and buildings that appear to have been left in a hurry.  This planet also has the distinction of having three suns, so it is never night.  Among the survivors are an Islamic Imam (Keith David), his followers, a snooty rich guy, a kid named Jack (Rhiana Griffith), a random chick, and William Johns (Cole Hauser), who is escorting the dangerous killer Riddick (Vin Diesel) to a prison planet.  Riddick has spent so much time in dank, dark prisons that he paid to have his normal eyes surgically enhanced to give him permanent night vision, which means that he has to wear welding goggles during the day --- or all the time on this three-sunned planet.

An even more distinguishing feature: Diesel hair!

Riddick is the strong, silent type, as well as the type that is intelligent and ruthless.  Of course, not everything is as it seems.  For starters, Johns might not be telling the truth, Jack may be more than he seems, and this daylight planet may have night, after all.  You see, every twenty-two years there is a complete triple eclipse.  It's not a good time to catch up on your sleep, though, because when the night comes, so do these things:

Hammerhead raptor bats?

What are they?  They don't get a proper name in the film, but they eat people completely, they fly, and they operate using something like sonar.  The good news is that they are extremely sensitive to light.  The bad news is that the triple eclipse will last a month and there are enough of those creatures to flood the planet.  I guess everybody better work together and escape this planet, eh?

Grimmest.  Science fair.  Ever.

Before I go any further, there is something I would like to touch on.  How the hell does a planet with near-constant exposure to the sun manage to develop a life form that is deadly sensitive to light?  What kind of ass-backwards evolution is that?  And what do those creatures live on during the twenty-two years they are forced to live underground?  Wouldn't the twenty-two years to one month ratio also tone down things (evolutionary-wise) like enormous heads and wings?   If the only life on this planet for the creatures to feast on are the crash survivors and each other, shouldn't this species be nearly extinct soon?  This isn't a deal-breaker for me, but I like it when science fiction explains things with science.

The acting in Pitch Black isn't great, but is good enough.  Vin Diesel is intimidating and pretty cool as Riddick, and his character is intriguing.  Yes, it's awfully convenient that the guy with night vision eyes lands on a planet on the verge of a month of night, but...well, yeah, it is amusingly convenient to the plot.  Radha Mitchell was adequate as the resident rational thinker in the group.  I liked that her character wasn't entirely altruistic, but I dislike the noise she makes when she's frightened.

Pictured: ugly sounds

Cole Hauser is predictably mean and his acting is not going to impress anyone here.  The "complexity" of his character is laughable and Hauser is still a low-rent version of Josh Lucas. 

...but he has a shotgun.  A space shotgun.

I think my favorite moments in the movie are when Riddick and Hauser's character lock eyes and stare each other down.  Yes, those moments are cheesy and sometimes funny, but I really enjoy the idea of Cole Hauser standing up to Vin Diesel in a physical confrontation.  The rest of the cast was fine; most of the roles were poorly developed because the characters were essentially cannon fodder.

Director and co-writer David Twohy does a surprisingly good job with the suspense in Pitch Black.  He sets up Riddick as a kind of bogeyman, but the character turns out to be cool enough to live up to the bombast.  The set pieces were pretty cool for such a low-budget picture and I don't think the film suffered much for having an obviously low budget.  That said, Twohy sucks as an editor.  The action scenes are not impressive and often confusing, and the rest of the movie has a lot of scenes that do little except stretch the running time.  A lot of story elements are introduced with little to no impact on the characters or central story; Johns' morphine addiction felt tacked on and the fact that a survivor (Zeke) murdered another survivor mistakenly is completely glossed over with a roll of the eyes.  Meanwhile, other things that could have used explanation are completely ignored, such as the evolution of the creatures or exactly how Jack was able to find all the stuff to mimic Riddick.  And the story felt clunky and rushed at times, like the when and how behind the snooty guy dying.  I like the overall feel of this movie, but it is not the product of good direction.

I'm not knocking Pitch Black, though.  It is entertaining, mildly suspenseful and Diesel makes a pretty good tough guy lead.  The idea behind the plot is fairly unconventional and the sci-fi elements didn't distract from making this a decent survival flick.  It is lacking that extra something to make it definitely cool, though.  I liked Riddick as a mysterious bad-ass, and I liked how he had presence in the film even when he was not on-screen, but I think Pitch Black could have used a couple more scenes of him doing something awesome.

I love dumb action movies.  When they're good, they're great (Predator).  When they're bad, they're often still pretty damn amusing (Alien vs. Predator: Requiem).  Unfortunately, though, this generation of actors hasn't had the wealth of stupid action heroes that the 80s and 90s were blessed with.  Sure, Jason Statham is willing to indulge my love of inane plots and ridiculous action, but what about the other promising heroes of yesteryear?  I thought Vin Diesel was going to be this generation's Stallone, but he refused to make immediate sequels to his biggest hits (The Fast and the Furious and xXx), and wound up in a Disney movie.  I thought Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson would be our Schwarzenegger, but after a few crappy tries (The Scorpion King and Doom), he also went the Disney route.

Screen shot from Doom

What is wrong with these people?  Don't they know that I don't want to see them crack jokes?  I just want to see them try and punch something to the moon!  Is that too much to ask?

Fast Five answers my question with a reassuring smile and a sensuous back rub.  This, the fifth installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise, picks up right where Fast and Furious: Faster and Furiouser left off; Dom (Vin Diesel) is on a bus, heading to prison, while his buddy, Brian (Paul Walker), and sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), head a team of fancy car drivers, intent on jail-breaking him.  It's the opening scene, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that they are successful.  Breaking out of jail is kind of a big deal, though, so the trio head South to Rio de Janeiro.  Once there, they find themselves strapped for cash and take an ill-advised heist job.  They were hired to steal some cars from a train, and they were going to be working with some sleazy dudes.  It turns out that the dudes worked for drug kingpin Hernan Reyes (Joaquim deAlmeida) and the cars on the train were actually his seized property; that means that the DEA is escorting the cars, too.  One thing leads to another and the good guys wind up stealing a car that has a computer chip with Reyes' drug operation basically programmed into it; in the process, though, the bad guys kill the DEA agents and place the blame on Dom and Brian.  That brings in some heavy hitters from America, like DSS agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), to bring in these rapid and angry hoodlums.  The rest of the film has the good guys on the run from the police and the drug dealers, and trying to figure out a way to turn the tables on Reyes.  Preferably, in a manner that would include cars.

...like ghost riding the whip

How's the acting in Fast Five?  Man, I'm hilarious.

Actually, the acting is about what you'd expect from a movie that is all about wrecking cars.  Vin Diesel won't win any awards for this one, but he acts tough and delivers some truly awful dialogue with enough conviction to actually sound reasonable.  This was the meanest character I have seen Dwayne Johnson play, but he was a serviceable mean good guy.  Basically, his job was to look enormous and frightening enough to make a musclehead (Diesel) look tiny, and he succeeded.

His bicep is the size of her waist

Paul Walker and Jordanna Brewster are both as uncharismatic as ever; luckily, their wooden performances happen in a movie where things go boom, so it doesn't really matter.  To put their acting in perspective, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges was more entertaining with less screen time.  Or maybe that "with" should be a "because."  Tyrese Gibson returns to the franchise as well; Tyrese is a terrible actor, but I enjoy watching him try to emote.  To his credit, he is better here than in 2 Fast 2 Furious.  Reggaeton singer Don Omar makes another appearance (he was in Fast and Furious) as one of Dominic's comic underlings; just like Ricky Ricardo back in the day, his gag is the fact that he speaks Spanish.  Hilarity ensues.  Gal Gadot also returns from the previous film, although I'm pretty sure she was a bad guy last time out.  Whatever.  Her job is to be hot.  Sung Kang also returns as the unusually laid-back illegal street racer; his character is still alive, which places the chronology of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (where he dies, two movies ago) into an even more questionable place in the space/time continuum.  Oh, and Eva Mendes has a quick cameo after the credits.  Some have compared her scene to Alec Baldwin's in Glengarry Glen Ross.  Man, I can't even type that without giggling.

Pictured above: enough acting to fill a tiny, tiny hat

Honestly, though, does any of that really matter?  These actors are just in place to provide a weak excuse for extended chase sequences.  Fast Five absolutely excels in this regard.  Who should get the credit for this?  Maybe director Justin Lin.  This is his third Furious movie, and each one is better than the last.  That doesn't take much, since Tokyo Drift is truly one of the worst movies I have ever seen, but the entertainment value of his past two films is undeniable.  Perhaps the credit should go to the stunt coordinators.  Whatever the case, Lin deserves some recognition for not letting too much character development get in the way of some pretty cool ridiculous stunts.

Waiting for a stunt, or emulating Pacino in Cruising?

Fans of the franchise should note that Fast Five maintains the homoerotic tension that made it famous.  That is why people went to see the first one, right?  This time around, it's not about Diesel and Walker, or Walker and Gibson; this movie is all about waiting for the fight scene where Diesel and The Rock would start squirming on the ground and "accidentally" start making out.  I won't spoil when or if that happens, but I think we all agree that it should.

This is what it sounds like when doves cry

As ridiculous as this movie is, I actually genuinely enjoyed Fast Five.  It's not trying to be anything but a big budget action movie, and it's a pretty solid one.  The plot, while still convoluted as all hell, makes more sense than any of the other F&F plots to date.  The stunts are pretty wicked awesome; I'm not a car guy, but some of these car stunts are spectacular.  Most importantly, the film delivers on the promise of having two of this generation's baldest and muscleiest men pound the crap out of each other.  My only complaint is that Diesel and The Rock never shook hands while flexing their biceps, like Carl Weathers and Ahhnuld did in Predator.  I won't go so far as to call this a great movie, but it is certainly fun to watch.  Fast Five is definitely the best and Furiousest film in the series to date.

 As an added bonus, here's a Vin Diesel sound board I stumbled across.  Personally, I prefer sound boards that focus on one or two words per button, but this one is still pretty fun to play with.


Vin Diesel (Sound Boards animation) | Watch more