Review of Riddick (2013) by Charles Austin M — 03 Sep 2014

While the effects and visuals in "Riddick" are undeniably beautiful, the story is.... Well, I'm not exactly sure WHAT story they were trying to tell. As a continuation of the Necromonger storyline, this movie is not it.

We get less than 5 minutes of Necromonger flashbacks, which actually look like out-take footage from "The Chronicles of Riddick" - Karl Urban's appearance amounts to about 10 seconds, scarcely a cameo.

We are also provided a tedious hour's worth of Riddick-versus-Merc confrontations; but the storyline of "Riddick" eventually rotates all the way back to "Pitch Black"...and by that I mean it's like a REMAKE of the "Pitch Black"night flight, complete with ravenous monsters in the dark, a drenching rainstorm, power-nodes that must be returned to the escape vessel, and even another "holy man" character who carries a Bible and prays annoyingly in the midst of the carnage.

It's all so familiar that "Riddick" feels like the IMMEDIATE sequel to "Pitch Black," rather than the third installment. Yeah, Vin Diesel gets in his ominous one-liners, as usual, but without any of the HUMOR he displayed in the first two films.

I mean, when a chained-up Riddick NOT ONLY promises to kill everyone in the room but ALSO threatens to rape a lesbian character, it's not really all that amusing - even LESS amusing is that Riddick's brutal charms seem to TURN ON the lesbian character, which makes no sense whatsoever.

All-in-all, "Riddick" comes off as a visually polished but ultimately unimaginative and somewhat scattered attempt to revisit the "best of" Richard B. Riddick...but WITHOUT any of the nuances that made Riddick's character endearing in the first two films.