Movie Review: Riddick

Starring: Vin Diesel, Katee Sackhoff, Jordi Molla & Matthew Nable.

Director: David Twohy

In a few words...: Riddick is back, betrayed again, and left to die on a desolate planet, until two sets of bounty hunters turn up, after his head.
 
Rating: 8/10

Beware: SPOILERS AHEAD

Coolness. That's what Vin Diesel oozes as Richard B. Riddick, the titular escaped convict around which now a trilogy of sci-fi films have been based. Violent coolness, even. As much blood and guts as there is, and as much as you get the feeling that Riddick is a bad man, probably far beyond any real redemption, it's impossible not to be really impressed when he commits another act of violence.

Yet again, poor old Riddick has been betrayed, and stuck on a sunny, dry planet that, he discovered just soon enough to remain alive, he shares with a bunch of scorpion-type creatures that are pretty poisionous, too. After battling a few, he makes it to an abandoned outpost, and triggers the emergency beacon there, which, of course, identifies him as being worth a lot of money to bounty hunters.

Not surprisingly, two separate groups soon descended, hunting the prize. The first group, led by Santana (Molla) is there simply for the money, and Riddick is worth more to them if they take his head home in a box. But he outwits them pretty quickly, and turns the tables, placing them under siege...at about the same time as the second almost-military group arrive. Their commander (Nable) is a hard-nosed man called Boss Johns and his off-sider is the maybe-lesbian Dahl (Sackhoff). Johns has personal history with Riddick. 

It turns out that Johns has some personal history with Riddick. His son played a major role in the events of Pitch Black, the film that really launched Diesel's career. And Johns is out for revenge, in the form of collecting Riddick's head. As Riddick outwits and outlasts, a storm arrives, which turns the dry, dusty landscape into a muddy bog. Normally, not a huge problem, except that the mud unburies quite the horde of the scorpion-like creatures, who set about trying to kill the interlopers. 

You know where this film is going  by now: after losing a few men, Riddick and the bounty hunters join forces to get off the planet, and there's plenty that's awesomely spectacular ahead, in a pulse-pounding and, at times, very tense finale - even though you know what's going to happen: Riddick will survive, some of the others will not be so lucky. The dark and stormy night during which the alien attack comes really ratchets up the claustrophobic mood that encroaches over proceedings.

You know what you're going to get out of a Riddick film. There's violence, monsters, bad guys, Vin Diesel growling occasionally, or else just staring vengefully off into the distance between bouts of taking out sinister alien creatures. It's a tried and true format, but that doesn't stop it from being hugely entertaining. Twohy has done a good job taking advantage of the sinister landscape, and there's more than enough excitement to carry through a film that's largely dialogue-free, and with a plot that never gets in the way of Riddick doing his thing.