Review of Riddick (2013) by Carlos I — 16 Jan 2014

It's definitely a good thing that, in exchange for doing a cameo in Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, that Vin Diesel was given all rights to this character, because I doubt if Universal had kept the rights that we would've gotten the same movie we got here.

I'm not saying this movie reinvents the wheel for this franchise, or hell even the sci-fi/horror/action genre, but it certainly rights most of the wrongs with the previous Riddick movie. The first wrong, being forced into a PG-13 rating in order to get as wide an audience as possible to see the movie.

I think this is a problem that plagues way too many movies in this day and age, they're forced into something that's completely restricting and limiting when you're trying to do a more "adult" action/horror/sci-fi hybrid.

It's good to see the film embrace the R-rating fully with plenty of adult language and really unique deaths. The second wrong was how the first movie pretty much was pretty much all over the place story-wise and the movie was worse off for it.

Thankfully, this movie simplifies shit down and, again, the movie and the franchise are better off for it. The movie sees Riddick stuck on a desolate planet with no means of escape as a very dangerous storm is approaching.

He calls a rescue beacon and with it comes bounty hunters and mercs hellbent on claiming Riddick's head as their own for a bounty. Simple and easy to follow. There's still some hints of a deeper lore going on with Karl Urban's character and his little quest to achieve transcendence, which they may explore in future films.

So the film, smartly, combines simple storytelling while still managing to give you enough hints for potential sequels, should they choose to do them. As mentioned, the film is fairly predictable and in a lot of ways, it kinda feels like a remake of Pitch Black rather than a full-fledged sequel.

But it definitely works in a lot of ways. Personally, I liked how the first hour or so of the film was focused on Riddick hunting down the bounty hunters and mercs in a stealthy manner and how he thrives in the darkness.

It was definitely more focused on the atmosphere rather than purely on being an over-the-top action film. The second hour sees Riddick and the bounty hunters and mercs (two different groups) working together in an uneasy alliance in order to escape a situation that, separately, none of them would survive.

Personally, I found this to be a little mix of Alien/Aliens and The Thing, that's definitely the vibe it gave off. And I mean, you can't borrow from two better films so I was all for it. Yes, the movie borrows from the classics, but that doesn't mean that what it does isn't good.

The supporting cast is solid, but the characters are really well-developed enough for them to truly stand out, but I found them to be good enough to keep the movie from dragging a lot. There are some story elements that don't go anywhere, like the lock for instance, but I think the movie goes at a good enough pace and it keeps things largely interesting throughout.

I liked this movie as you can tell, I don't like it a lot. But I find that David Twohy found a good balance between the horror, action and sci-fi elements of the film and Vin Diesel clearly wants to make this franchise work, so he's, even if he's the silent-type, one-liner badass, I find that he's the perfect person to play this role.

Even if he had never played the role since the beginning of the franchise, he'd still be perfect. I'm interested in seeing where this franchise goes, if it goes anywhere after this film, now that Diesel owns the rights.

It's clear his and Twohy's direction for the franchise is better than anyone else at Universal could have conceived. Solid movie, predictable but a fun movie nonetheless.