Review of Riddick (2013) by Jonathan B — 11 Dec 2014

I do like Vin Diesel. There is something interesting about him as an actor that for me, makes him far more appealing than the majority of the other muscle-bound action heroes. The character of Riddick suits him perfectly and I have generally enjoyed this series of movies, despite some of the more baffling plot elements.

In this third full-length feature, we see the character pretty much back on familiar ground, almost as though the last movie didn't happen. Indeed, David Twohy seems to have decided to pretty much re-stage the plot of Pitch Black using many of the same ideas.

So we have our eponymous antihero being pursued by bounty hunters on a desolate planet that becomes overrun with slavering monsters. This time, the twist is that they don't come out in the dark of an eclipse, but rater wait until it rains.

Of course, the bounty hunters gradually get picked off in a variety of increasingly gory ways, giving Vin Diesel plenty of opportunities to deliver suitably pithy observations. There are some nice special effects and the various creatures that inhabit the planet are well realised.

In particular the "dog" that Riddick befriends and raises is a great looking creature. Kate Sackhoff makes for a suitably kick-ass female bounty hunter but I'm really not sure about Jordi Molla and Matt Nable as the leaders of the two rival gangs.

Neither seem particularly convincing and indeed, Molla's character would have had his head kicked in by his own men long before they landed on the planet. Ultimately, this movie is enjoyable but, it is just too much of a copy of Pitch Black to score more highly and I doubt we'll be seeing much more of this character in the future, which I think is a shame.