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Movie Review: Riddick
“There are bad days – and then, there are legendary bad days”; how apt, considering the circumstances which include: no food, hyena-like scavenger dogs and people who just want to see you dead.
In “Riddick”, the threequel to “Pitch Black” staring Vin Diesel as the hair-free anti-hero, the dialogue (which I think are the first words of narrative exposition in the movie) happens after Riddick finds himself betrayed, beaten and marooned on a desolate planet. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened earlier, what happens next, or exactly why anything happens at all.
Riddick, for those who don’t follow sci-fi or Mr. Diesel’s work, is a wanted felon from an exterminated race with surgically altered eyes that glow and see dark. As the unlikely protagonist with the predatory urge (people from Furya, his home planet are hot-tempered), Riddick often lands himself in hunter-prey situations where muscles are flexed and a sizable number of dangerous alien life has its guts hacked off.
Continuing from the critically panned, but only slightly lackluster (and decidedly pulpy) “The Chronicles of Riddick”, we see Mr. Diesel playing a bored version of Conan post his Cimmeria-conquering days. Two beats later, “Riddick” strips him – and the franchise – down to its barest bones.
The first twenty minutes serve Mr. Diesel well allowing him enough leeway to reshape Riddick’s slack from running the Necromonger throne he inherited after offing the last monarch (“You keep what you kill” says Necromonger beliefs, including the last dictator’s few wives and the film’s unwarranted ‘R’ rating).
Anyways, gone are those metallic greys in production design, interstellar threats and the pale-faced villains (Karl Urban and Andreas Apergis from “Chronicles” fleetingly appear as a jump-start reference). Their replacements are near-dead – and quite dusty – planetary terrains, devil dogs, poisonous amphibian monsters with scorpion-like tails, and two units of bounty-hunting mercenaries.
The first team to answer Riddick’s call when he triggers a distress beacon has Santana (Jordi Mollà), your run-on-the-mill gold grubbing psycho killer soldier of fortune; with him is WWE’s Dave Bautista, whose function is more-or-less to have a punch-up with Mr. Diesel later in the movie. The second unit has Matthew Nable as Boss Johns (who tags in a backstory for relevancy), and a mean-streak sharpshooter played by Katee Sackhoff of “Battlestar Gallactica” fame.
If “Riddick” sounds fuzzily like “Pitch Black” re-worked, it’s because it is.
The screenplay, written by franchise-director David Twohy, includes the usual unswerving clichés: bad, cocky dialogues, worse special effects, and unimaginative production design. Bearing in mind that most of action is set outdoors, the pedestrian level of production is hardly doing wonders for both Mr. Diesel and Mr. Twohy. But then again, budgeted at $38 million there isn’t really much to spend in the first place.
In any case the triteness is a necessity to get “Riddick” back to its feet. Braving the wild – or the alien wildebeests, or gun-stocked bounty hunters – isn’t the problem; then again, for Riddick, played by Mr. Diesel with consistent unblinking emotion and growly monotone, nothing really is that big of a problem.
“Riddick” isn’t a work of art, but it’s darn decent as long as Mr. Diesel is putting the pain on people we don’t really care about in the first place. At least the guy is having a swell day at work.
Directed by David Twohy; Produced by Vin Diesel, Ted Field, Samantha Vincent; Written by David Twohy (based on characters by Jim and Ken Wheat) Cinematography by David Eggby; Editing by Tracy Adams and Music by Graeme Revell.
Starring Vin Diesel, Jordi Mollà, Matt Nable, Katee Sackhoff, Dave Bautista, Bokeem Woodbine, Raoul Trujillo Andreas Apergis and Karl Urban.Released by Universal Pictures, “Riddick” is rated R for nudity, dislocated joints and slashed alien guts.
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