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| "She's got Betty Da-avis eyes" |
Riddick, played by Vin Diesel as a nude muscle (as if he had a choice), was introduced as a scary bald alien convict in Pitch Black, a compact science-fiction horror film with some decent twists which became a modest cult hit.
After big budget sequel The Chronicles of Riddick died a death at the box office Vin Diesel was forced to retire Riddick for a while. But VD is nothing if not infectious, and he persuaded series writer and director David Twohy (the talented man who wrote, amongst others, The Fugitive, Waterworld and under-seen Charlie Sheen scifi flick The Arrival) to hash out a new, low-budget Riddick story over the kitchen table.
The result is, unfortunately, underwhelming.
It starts well. Riddick is stranded on a horrid desert planet after being fooled by some necromongers (the baddies in the last film). The opening half hour, which is almost dialogue-free, plays like Wall-e's silent first act translated into testosterone and hate. A broken-legged Riddick battles off alien hyenas, makes friends with a puppy and has a great fight with a swamp-dwelling fish/scorpion thing.
But then Riddick finds a shack with a scanner in it, and deliberately gets it to beam his identity into space, and the film goes to pot. (Incidentally, this bit also reveals that, bizarrely, Riddick's name is Richard B Riddick. I was sure Riddick would just have one name - Riddick. But no. He's not even called something appropriately alien, like Dhgpr Riddick. Instead, he follows the naming conventions of western earthlings from the 21st century. Dick B Riddick. No wonder he wants to track down his race. It's so he can find mum and dad and give them a kicking. They landed him with dicks at both ends of his name. He has to give himself a semantic roasting every time he writes a cheque).
Dick B Riddick scans his amusing name into space to attract bounty hunters, so he can steal one of their ships. When they arrive, it's a let-down. They don't have great characters. It's like Twohy got his kid to write a lazy rip-off of the mercenaries from not even Aliens, but Alien:Resurrection.
In an interesting approach, Twohy has Riddick almost disappear from the screen for the next hour. It's an attempt to get the audience to see Riddick from the grunts' perpsective as a deadly, invisible, unstoppable evil, using his shiny irises to pop up and kill them one by one before vanishing like a pervy-eyed madman.
But being cardboard cut-outs, the bounty hunters are not very interesting to watch. And because I knew from the previous films that Riddick is a good guy, I didn't feel the soldiers' fear. I knew he wasn't a threat to the good ones, even the most annoying, a lesbian played by the star of Battlestar Galactica who wears a constant smirk (which, instead of making her look cool, makes her look like she's been told to wear a constant smirk).
Riddick, sadly, also gets annoying. As soon as he speaks he becomes unutterably smug. When he's caught and held prisoner, instead of gagging him everyone listens, rapt, while he predicts their doom in a slow, self-satisfied baritone. It's impossible not to picture Vin Diesel telling Twohy "Write in the screenplay, 'Everyone listens because Riddick is awesome and scary.'" The ridiculously specific prophecies don't help. When Riddick says, "I'm going to kill you with that sword in exactly five minutes," it just made me think he'd flipped ahead in the script.
The twists from Pitch Black aren't there, nor is the huge ambition of the silly-but-fun middle film. And the climax is a damp squib. Well, squid. Tonnes of the double-headed monsters attack, except suddenly they are very easy to despatch. Riddick kicks loads off a cliff as he, erm, runs away and gets airlifted to safety by the lesbian bounty hunter he saved earlier. Not very badass.
And yet...if they can dial down the smug and dial up the broken, silent Riddick, I'll come back for more. I want to find out what the B stands for, Bernard or Bdick.
