One sequel (The Chronicles Of Riddick), numerous computer games and nine years have passed without Vin Diesel matching the tone of the original, Pitch Black. Mr Diesel’s star seems to have faded over recent years with bigger action guys taking his place, so a lot was riding on this return to the basics and the dark heart of Riddick’s nocturnal activities.
This time Riddick is left for dead on a sun-scorched planet and ready to be picked apart by an alien race of predators. Yet he activates an emergency beacon that alerts two spaceships to his presence. One with a band of mercenaries who have no morals and the other with a man from Riddick’s past. It’s a pretty simple premise but right from the off it’s mishandled and that is how the film continues right to the end credits: the constant witty banter may work initially but soon the script relies far too much on the men having sarcastic digs at each other rather than getting on with shit.
Vin Diesel tries to channel Captain Willard’s psychosis yet misses anything that made that relevant to the story, in fact Riddick is missing from most of the middle third of the film and instead it’s left to the inane bunch of nomads to try and string the story along until he returns just in time to start the battle against these alien predators.
The final twenty minutes has some of the most sexist dialogue that we have ever heard, even the American Pie films would blush at what is said. Hopefully Katee Sackhoff didn’t know exactly how things would happen until the filming, otherwise it goes against everything that women in action films should be trying to achieve. In fact, Sackhoff is the only decent actor in it, until she loses all ability to understand what her character is doing on the desolate planet and instead becomes a plaything for the macho boys and their toys.
Riddick misses every punch it tries to throw and is a ghost of the original source material from Pitch Black. It’s a film so far up its own arse that it can’t see the desert plains for the crappy CGI rocks.
Mark has awarded Riddick two Torches of Truth
