Riddick:
After becoming Lord Marshall of the Necromonger fleet at the end of Chronicles of Riddick, Richard B. Riddick is betrayed by Commander Vaako, who strands him on a desolate planet, who Riddick was told was his home world of Furya. Riddick now must survive the horrible conditions of the
planet, while evading bounty hunters who have come for his head. After such a long gap between Riddick films, almost a decade, I was surprised to see him come back to the big screen. It was also odd Vin Diesel having two big budget movies (this and Fast and Furious 6) come out only a few months apart. Unfortunately, this movie is a big letdown. Karl Urban barely appears in the film, his role as Vaako is a cameo if anything, and the entire subplot of Vaako's betrayal goes unresolved. Vin Diesel is badass as Riddick, but the rest of the cast is a bit lackluster. Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) plays one of the mercenaries, and she's the best part of the movie aside from Riddick. Jordi Molla (a Spanish film star, who has appeared in Blow and Colombiana) plays the incompetent and sadistic mercenary Santana, but he's not much of a threat to Riddick, so he fails as a villain. Matthew Mable (from The Final Winter, who kind of looks like Jeremy Renner) plays the head mercenary Boss Johns, father of the cowardly mercenary character William Johns from the first film. He's pretty cool and serves as more of a straight up good guy where Riddick is more of an antihero. Wrestler Dave Bautista plays a mercenary named Diaz. This movie is a bit lackluster, and feels like it drags on for the first half. It's actually like three movies squished into one. Judging by the trailer, it looked like a reboot of Pitch Black, the first film in the series, but it's actually divided into three segments: the first one, which is like more like a basic or primal Riddick, where he's just surviving with whatever supplies he has around, the second segment, which is him keeping the bounty hunters at bay (this is the majority of the movie), and the third and final segment, the mini-Pitch Black remake. (This is only like the last 20 minutes of the movie, despite the trailers showing it off as the main plot.) The movie overall has very little action and the characters are a bit one-dimensional. Riddick is definitely the weakest installment in the sci-fi action series, and it shows, and although I'd love to see more and better films from the series, I don't think it's gonna happen, even though this film did well at the box office and got mixed to favorable reviews, this series is definitely on it's last legs. 2.5/5 stars.
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