Cast: Vin Diesel, Karl Urban, Katee Sackhoff
Director: David Twohy
Country: USA | UK
Genre: Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Official Website: Here
Editor’s Notes: Riddick is now open in wide theatrical release.
The third installment of David Twohy and Vin Diesel’s sci-fi epic wisely takes a complete 180 from the previous film, The Chronicles of Riddick. This film tones down the scale of the story telling to focus solely on Riddick. And that’s really the best thing they could have done after the overly complex, confusing and honestly boring plot they tried to throw at us in the second film. It’s a shame they didn’t do it terribly effectively.
This film tones down the scale of the story telling to focus solely on Riddick. And that’s really the best thing they could have done after the overly complex, confusing and honestly boring plot they tried to throw at us in the second film.
Here we find Riddick abandoned on an alien planet, injured, and surrounded on all sides by savage beasts that want to eat him. Riddick decides that this is his fate and that he needs to get back in touch with his animal side. To that end, he takes a naked stroll in the moonlight, adopts a puppy, and builds up an immunity to snake monster venom. But how did our bad ass get himself into this position? It turns out that the Necromongers whom Riddick defeated in the last episode decided that they didn’t actually want Riddick to be their king. So Vaako (Karl Urban - minus the wicked Mohawk/mullet from Chronicles) sends Riddick to this alien planet under the pretense of showing him how to get back to Furya, his home planet. Once there, Riddick is betrayed by the Necromongers and left for dead. Then the Necromongers leave. And that’s it. While it’s admirable that Twohy didn’t completely disregard The Chronicles of Riddick, he does manage to gloss over the events of that film completely. But that’s OK. As soon as Riddick restores himself to the animal rage that he was so familiar with in Pitch Black, that’s when the fun starts.
Two separate groups of bounty hunters arrive on the planet with the express interest of capturing Riddick’s head and collecting a massive bounty. Riddick clearly doesn’t want this to happen and he begins offing the bounty hunters one by one. One group is lead by the abrasive and obnoxious Santana, who proves to be a bit of a joke. The other team of Bounty Hunters is lead by Johns, a calm and collected professional bounty hunter with a whole pile of nifty toys and gadgets. Fans of the series will immediately understand what’s going on with Johns and why he’s there. It’s all very Die Hard 3. The conceit of the plot is that the crews of both ships need power nodes to launch their ships, and Riddick has hidden them in the desert, where they are surrounded on all sides by the venomous snake monsters that Riddick met in the first act. From that point forward the film trades all notions of character development in for a series of flashy chase sequences and obtuse sexual innuendos. It’s a bit of a no brainer.
The dialogue is laughably bad. The machismo and tough guy clichés that ooze out of all of the male characters (which is all of the characters except Dahl, played rather superficially by Katee Sackhoff) are overpoweringly hilarious.
This film was superior to Chronicles of Riddick, but that doesn’t mean that it was good. The dialogue is laughably bad. The machismo and tough guy clichés that ooze out of all of the male characters (which is all of the characters except Dahl, played rather superficially by Katee Sackhoff) are overpoweringly hilarious. Riddick’s voice-overs inspired groans throughout the auditorium. Top that off with all of the overtly misogynistic comments sprinkled throughout and it all adds up to a really silly ride.
The only part of the film that was mildly interesting or innovative was the opening sequence when we see Riddick fighting for his life against that natural climate on whatever planet it is he’s landed on. In these scenes we actually get a sense that Riddick is a tactical minded professional who understands survival in a visceral sense. He uses his smarts to figure out what he needs to do to get by. Once other humans are introduced, Riddick goes right back into punch-punch kick-kick territory.
As much as I like Vin Diesel, I have to say he drops the ball in this installment, delivering a performance that offers nothing new or innovative. He doesn’t even come off as cool. It’s as though he’s going through the motions of making a Riddick film (or Babylon AD, or xXx, or whatever other action movie you can think of) without any real passion for it.
Apparently there’s a notion that more Riddick movies will be coming our way if this film does well at the box office. Sadly, I think it’s time that David Twohy and Vin Diesel put Riddick in the dark for good.
[notification type=”star”]65/100 ~ OKAY. Apparently there’s a notion that more Riddick movies will be coming our way if this film does well at the box office. Sadly, I think it’s time that David Twohy and Vin Diesel put Riddick in the dark for good.[/notification]
