Director: David Twohy
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
An under the radar near-classic was born when Vin Diesel’s hard-hitting convict antihero Riddick first appeared over a decade ago in the lean and effective Pitch Black, before an attempt to turn it into a big budget franchise saga stalled with the bloated and incomprehensible Chronicles of Riddick. This third in the series attempts to take him back to basics to an extent, and begins with Riddick left for dead on a baking and near uninhabitable planet, where no end of computer generated beasties are out to kill him. This unexpectedly extended sequence showcases some imaginative creature design and Riddick’s survival instincts before we get to the meat of the plot in which a bunch of the universe’s most ineffectual mercenaries arrive on the planet intent on collecting his head. This is more hunt and bait than straight action, and proves to be rather interesting, at least giving some relief from Diesel’s rather portentous noir voiceover. Disappointingly this can’t be sustained into a final third that runs out of ideas and relapses into uninspired evade-the-monsters shenanigans that try to recall Aliens but come up short. But Riddick remains a hulking and iconic presence throughout, and further adventures in his company wouldn’t be entirely unwelcome.
This is the fourth. How is it all the people who are writing reviews don't know this?
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