Review of The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) by Sam C — 10 Sep 2013

The Chronicles of Riddick is a disappointing attempt at making a sequel to 2000's cult classic Pitch Black. I really enjoyed Pitch Black, I thought it was a fun Sci-Fi thriller with a good premise and I thought it would be cool to see more of the character Riddick; unfortunately I found the sequel to be a mess. The Chronicles of Riddick does have some good things to it but it also has quite a few bad things to it that just anchored down the film for me. My biggest problem I had with the film was the film's script that was written by David Twohy, who also directed the film. One thing I loved about Pitch Black was that the story was simple, in The Chronicles of Riddick Twohy tries to hard at expanding the universe that the audience is in and ends up creating a very dull story. I did like some aspects of the story but in the end there was just way to much packed into this movie and most of it I found to be very boring. The best part of the story is following Riddick, his story is the most interesting unlike the other stories about the useless side characters, which I thought were too many. Twohy's direction wasn't the greatest, he did help create some cool action sequences but he did an awful job at pacing the film. Some scenes would be very fast and exciting and then the next scene would be very lifeless. The effects in this movie are just decent, even back in 2004 they wouldn't have been the greatest. Without a doubt the best part about this movie is Vin Diesel, once again he steals the show and just becomes this bad-ass character that has a few good one-liners. The only two actors that I thought were worth mentioning in the supporting cast are Karl Urban and Judi Dench, they were both fine even though I thought there characters were pointless. Other than those three actors I thought the acting was pretty atrocious. In the end The Chronicles of Riddick is a messy sequel that I would not recommend, some may enjoy this film but it just wasn't for me.

Additional Note: Why the f**k was this rated PG-13?!