Riddick:
***/*****, or 6/10
Belated
third installment of the so-called 'Riddick trilogy', which started
with the moderate hit Pitch Black (2000) and continued with
the overly grandiose The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), like
this film (which in some territories carries the ominous subtitle
Dead Man Stalking) written and directed by David Twohy. Vin
Diesel returns as the muscular Richard B. Riddick, a member of the
enigmatic, near extinct humanoid race called Furyans that can see in
the dark, is adept at survival against all odds and generally proves
hard to kill. Nevertheless, Riddick's new army of followers he
conquered at the end of the previous film tries to do just that,
leaving him for dead on a barren world populated by all manner of
vicious beasts, where he himself still reigns supreme as the most
dangerous predator of all (as usual). Nevertheless, driven by his
primal instinct to return to his homeworld, Riddick decides to let
his continued existence be known via an emergency beacon on a vacant
outpost, after which two different teams of bounty hunters arrive to
hunt him down. One of these is out solely for money, with the clear
intent of 'ghosting' their prey as he's worth twice as much dead as
he is alive, while the other is on a mission of a more personal
nature, led by a father who believes he once lost his son at
Riddick's cold hands. The latter team also comes with Katee Sackhoff,
almost reprising her seminal role as Battlestar Galactica's
Starbuck playing a tough woman who takes crap from no man and is
fully able to defend herself from everybody who dares to try.
Gratifying as it is to see Sackhoff can still balance smart, strong
and sexy, her character proves fairly redundant as she has no
singular action scenes of her own, save for a brief suspenseful
shower sequence, while she's plagued by being the butt of sexually
intimidating jokes for most of the film. After Riddick has outwitted
and caused the deaths of half of the men out for his head, as well as
having made off with vital starship components which prevent the
teams from leaving, he successfully convinces them to seize
hostilities for a while as a huge storm front is sweeping over their
heads and brings forth great scores of hungry carnivores that want a
piece of all of them. Soon, it seems as though even Riddick will not
make it out alive this time, but we as an audience know better of
course.
For
those who watched the trailer and wondered how the heck Riddick went
from being a virtual emperor of the galaxy at the end of Chronicles
of to a lone survivor on a desolate world at the start of
Riddick, a narrative connection between the events of this
film and its predecessor is all too briefly incorporated, as we are
treated to seeing Karl Urban's Lord Vaako again for less than 60
seconds of screen time (a waste of a terrific actor!), despite the
suggestion that the information he relays is crucial in some way: it
would appear Twohy still has some sort of big pay-off in mind to
close off what he started in the second film, but appearently he
either didn't have the inspiration or the budget to treat that
specific subject in this film, necessitating him to return to the
tone and substance of the original. It all proves overly familiar
territory, and often feels very much like an uninspired retread of
Pitch Black, which also witnessed Riddick making an unlikely
alliance with his enemies in order to escape the jaws and clutches of
hordes of creepy creatures out for human blood on an inhospitable
planet. Problem is, though Riddick ends up a fairly
entertaining popcorn flick (especially for those who are new to the
franchise), Pitch Black did it all better. It had more
original visual design, less obvious digital monsters and made the
character of Riddick feel more menacing and alien, while at this
point we know exactly what to expect from his persona: a limited
vocabulary, general growling and the usual bloodshed of (mostly
unlikeable) characters standing in his way. Riddick sadly remains a
one-note character played by an equally one-note actor. Now that
Twohy has displayed there's just little more he can do with the
Riddick character and the latter's coolness factor has decidedly worn
off, this may be a good time to put an end to this franchise that so
clearly was never meant to be a franchise, Twohy's hints at a fourth
film not withstanding.
