Vin Diesel and his buffed out ego must love this resurgence of his career. I suppose fans of Vinnie are digging it as well. The renewed interest in his “Fast and Furious” franchise over the last few years is unprecedented as each install becomes more and more popular on a global scale. Part 6 earned just south of $800MM this summer worldwide!!
So as his popularity has grown again, Vin has decided to dust off another character from his filmography and see if it’s him that gets the asses in the seats or if it’s actually just the “Fast and Furious” formula. Lucky for the bald actor, we are an entertainment society that devours sequels and does not seem to mind repetition. And we are an entertainment society that devours sequels and does not seem to mind repetition. Sorry, just testing the theory.
In “Riddick” we get to catch up with… you guessed it, Richard B. Riddick- the hardened action anti-hero from Diesel’s prior works “Pitch Black” and “The Chronicles of Riddick”. “Black” was a solid take on a sci-fi horror film and launched his career while “Chronicles” played like a lackluster rip-off of David Lynch’s “Dune” and stalled it. The scope of “Chronicles” was too large, the costumes were too silly and the R-rated action was reduced to a gutless PG-13. This go around acknowledges these mistakes and returns to the hard-R sci-fi action that best suits the character.
We meet up with our beloved criminal buried in a pile of rubble, left for dead on sun drenched planet. The first act of the film is almost dialogue-free as Riddick fights to survive against wild dogs, flying serpents and creatures that look like a cross between Giger’s “Alien” fused with a scorpion. These first 30 minutes are the best in the film and play like a live action version of a short story you would find in “Heavy Metal” magazine.
Then a group of bounty hunters arrive, set on collecting Riddick’s head as he is worth double the price delivered dead. A game of cat and mouse is played between Riddick and his would-be captors while an unseen menace approaches in the distance. They need to get off that planet before the storm arrives and, of course, they don’t. Chaos ensues and blood is splattered on every wall.
In Riddick, Diesel has given us an uber-macho badass that can do it all. He’s smart, fearless, brutal, funny and is so very sexy that even lesbians can’t resist his charms. This actually happens in the film. A woman who does not find men attractive falls for him at first sight because she’s unable to deny his raw manliness. It’s hilarious stuff that is meant to point out the ridiculous nature of these action movies. At least I hope that’s the intent.
While I enjoyed the supped up nature of “Riddick,” there are issues (but aren’t there always?) Audiences not familiar with the prior films in the series will be lost in spots. While “Riddick” only loosely ties itself to the prior films in the series, there are connections that would have been better off left out.
The effects vary in quality and there are moments of the film that just look outright cheap. The music score provided by Graeme Revell features almost nothing but pounding percussion and the result is distracting and numbing. Also, the film ends weak as the reveal of what awaits in the storm is nothing new and there is zero heightening.
Ultimately, “Riddick” is back to the form of the original, placing the action on a single, hostile planet and limiting the cast to only a handful of victims who systematically get plucked off as Riddick runs around annihilating computer generated beasties. Its good fun that delivers a mindless sort of mayhem that would be perfectly viewed at your local drive in.