Riddick Review

Based five years after the events of The Chronicles of Riddick, our titular hero finds himself abandoned on a harsh desolate planet inhabited by vicious Vulture-like flying animals, Viper-like swarms of water animals and packs of Jackal-like beasts. While he is able to best them for a time, even after being mortally wounded, Riddick soon adapts to his surroundings and raises and trains an orphaned jackal-beast pup as his own. Riddick soon realizes, however, that a massive series of storms that are approaching form the distance are unleashing countless more of the Demons, who must keep their skin wet at all times to survive. Desperately needing to escape, Riddick locates an empty mercenary station and activates an emergency beacon which broadcasts his identity and his presence on the planet. Two groups of mercenaries arrive, both after the large bounty placed on Riddick's head, and he must strategically eliminate them one by one in order to steal one of their ships to flee the planet.

Riddick looses the big-budget premise of the second film in the series, The Chronicles of Riddick, returning to its roots and going for the understated sparseness of the first film, Pitch Black, and it's done to much effect. A small group of characters, with conflicting wants that cause tension, as well as an unseen oncoming force that they must work together to overcome, will always be a proven formula for entertaining viewing. As is inherent with the film series, the film's futuristic sets, well-crafted landscapes, and the contrasts between the bright harshness of the planet with it painfully cold nights make it a visual spectacular to watch.

Diesel has really grown to encapsulate the titular hero over the course of the three films, and while he has never been a particularly well-developed character, Diesel provides an enigmatic and often sarcastic portrayal that proves to be fun viewing. The films, unfortunately, have always been too afraid to show the protagonist in a negative light, always hinting at the possibility of a truly horrible character, but always shying away from showing him. Riddick lures the two mercenary factions onto the deserted planet in which he has been abandoned, planning to escape, at no matter the cost. Initially Riddick does set traps that brutally maim and kill some members of the group, but they're all the sort of really annoying and unimportant characters that are killed off in all horror movies, so they're not much of a loss. Once they're all gone, however, and some of the more important secondary characters remain (important in the sense that they've have more screen time, but they aren't necessary any more developed), there's the opportunity to explore this really dark character in Riddick, but ultimately the film choose to make the role of the planets vicious alien inhabitants into the final villain that must be faced, and Riddick's ruthlessness falls to the back burner, pretty much in exactly the same way as it did in Pitch Black.

As mentioned, the mercenaries with which Riddick is ultimately forced to work with vary in their importance, but none really stand out in the film. Jordi Mollà would be the most interesting of the lot as Santana, the unstable leader of the more aggressive mercenary group. Despite a menacing start in which he brutally kills a female prisoner he's been holding captive, his character quickly turns into a slapstick caricature intended for laughs, not scares. Matthew Nable tries his best to bring something to his character Boss Johns, but unfortunately his character is written as a thinly-layered connection to Pitch Black, and serves little purpose in the scheme of the film. Katee Sackhoff's character, Dahl, Johns' second in command, is worst of all, however. While Sackhoff is well-known for playing hardened female characters, it's painful to watch her try to do the same here when her character is unnecessary written as a lesbian, with constant homosexual jabs been thrown about, and where she does a topless scene.

Like the problem with Johns' character, the film also has the difficult task of removing itself from the large mythology the series was left with at the end of The Chronicles of Riddick, and it doesn't do it well. Flashbacks are used at the beginning of the film to convey how Riddick, growing tired in his role as Lord Marshall of the Necromonger as caused uneasiness among his subjects. He strikes a deal with Commander Vaako (a surprising appearance by Karl Urban) for the location of his mysterious home world, Furya, and a ship to get there in exchange for the leadership. Riddick is escorted there by Necromonger guards, and he realises he has been taken to a desolate planet to be assassinated by them, before he kills them escapes. While it was an honourable attempt to still explain how Riddick got into his current situation, it was always going to be difficult doing so, and one can't help but feel that it may have been better if it had been ignored completely. It would have avoided an incredibly long and tedious opening act of watching Riddick have difficulty acclimatising to his new harsh surroundings interspersed with this unnecessary exposition.

Riddick provides nothing new to the formula it has already established, but Diesel is fun in the role, and for a science-fiction/ horror film it definitely does for audiences what it is designed to do.

Rating: 3/5