Bloodied, yet unbowed, Vin Diesel has resurrected another of his franchises that was once bound for extinction. After the abominable 2 Fast 2 Furious, the Fast and Furious franchise got a surge of attention when Diesel returned to the series, and by the fifth film everything that was rescuable, had been rescued.
Now, another series starring Vin Diesel has been revived — it began with Pitch Black and was followed by the critically panned The Chronicles of Riddick. Fittingly, the new movie Riddick, is one that has the titular character stranded on a desolate planet, attempting to rediscover himself, just as the director, David Twohy, and Diesel attempt to do with the film itself.
Picking up right after the events of The Chronicles of Riddick, Richard B. Riddick (Diesel) finds himself betrayed by the Necromongers who put him into power, leaving him for dead when he attempts to find his home planet, Furya. Left to his own devices, Riddick has no choice but to try and survive on a planet crawling with various alien predators.
The dulcet tones of Diesel’s narration help pass the time as we spend a sizeable chunk of the film’s length merely watching Riddick become the strong warrior that he was in the first film. As interesting as that might sound, serving as a quasi-origin story for how Riddick became the ruthless convict that he was, the plot is non-existent for far too long in this film.
Riddick is very much a B-movie littered with all the bad dialogue and ridiculous action you would expect.
Even when other characters are finally introduced, such as the seemingly insane Santana (Jordi Molla), and the tough, female mercenary, Dahl (Katee Sackhoff), Riddick does not have enough personality to carry the movie into its third act. There is a lot of retreading of plot points from Pitch Black, but with a significant lack of tension that the original film was able to convey.
On the bright side, Riddick completely understands what kind of film Pitch Black was, and why The Chronicles of Riddick was such a failure. Characters like Santana highlight the fact that Riddick is very much a B-movie littered with all the bad dialogue and ridiculous action you would expect.
The final act of Riddick is when the film soars, and every action scene is illuminated in great detail. The CG aliens that Riddick has to face are sometimes laughable, but most of the time they add to the B-movie feel of the film.
Undeniably, Diesel’s charisma and action star status is what carries Riddick and makes it a satisfying popcorn flick, until the final scene, when Twohy and Diesel turn the movie into an exercise in brutality and violence.
The film ends with an open for a possible sequel, and while Riddick is entertaining enough to warrant a watch for fans of science fiction and the previous films in the series, this is a movie you watch once and forget about completely until it is revived again.
