I appreciate that Vin Diesel likes playing Richard B.
Riddick (yes, that’s his full name) and writer-director David Twohy likes
making movies about this character. I also appreciate that, between 2000’s lean
genre exercise Pitch Black and 2004’s
cracked space opera sequel Chronicles of
Riddick, the world of Riddick remains largely unexplored. If there are two
things that are too often missing from sci-fi filmmaking these days it’s
enthusiasm and originality. These movies are certainly all set there. I should
like these movies. Diesel has charisma and Twohy, whose last feature was 2009's twisty murderers-on-the-run thriller A
Perfect Getaway, knows his way around pulp. I totally get what should be
fun about these movies, but I just don’t see it represented in what makes it on
the screen. I can never shake the feeling that the universe remains unexplored
in favor of thin little action beats that are endlessly repeated with a minimum
amount of charm.
And yet I return to the Riddick
universe dutifully, following Diesel and Twohy there in the hopes that this
time they’ve cracked the code. The latest in the series, simply titled Riddick, continues the story of the
tough, lonely Furyan. Twohy once again calls upon Diesel’s growling bass and
ripped physique to play the not-quite-human being the Riddick fan wiki somewhat
helpfully informs is “not necessarily superhuman” but who is nonetheless
“stronger, faster, tougher, more resistant to pain, more agile.” He can see in
the dark, which I guess falls under “posses acute senses.” He has “immense
stamina, and [can] recover quicker and with more finality that most of the
other human races.” I guess that explains why Riddick can survive a beating
that would kill most anyone else. As the movie opens, he’s been tricked by a
colleague for some reason and left for dead in the harsh wilderness of a
deserted planet. In voice over he grimly informs us that he’s having a “bad
day.”
For the duration of the film’s opening sequences, I was
totally on board. There’s a tightness and a gristle to the spare survivalist
sci-fi on display. Riddick fights off a pack of wolf-like creatures with lanky
legs and zebra stripes, eventually winning a puppy over to his side to become
his helpful pet. Other beasties, like a skull-shaped stinger snapping on the
end of a slithering tail twisting on the rear of a stubby, slimy reptilian
body, are definitely not potential friends. Riddick sets a broken bone in his
leg and screws some armor into his shin as a makeshift cast. He makes shelter,
goes hunting, and fashions some more appropriate wilderness clothing, that is
when he’s not walking at night without it, silhouetted by the maroon moon. I
half expected him to howl at it. There’s a largely wordless sense of despair
and methodical no-nonsense survival about the film. If the film had stayed a sort
of one-man sci-fi version of The Grey,
it might’ve had a chance at being one of the best movies of the year.
Alas, in rides an ensemble of mercenaries to bring things
down to a more easily digestible level. Riddick stumbles across and triggers an
emergency beacon that beams his face across the galaxy, hoping to hijack a ride
off the planet. One group, a rugged crew of nasty bounty hunters led by Jordi
Mollà, arrives hoping to leave with Riddick’s head in a box and collect a reward
that’s doubled if he’s brought back dead. The other group, a bunch of
professionals including Battlestar
Galactica’s Katee Sackoff and led by Matt Nable, is out to discover the
truth about whatever happened in Pitch
Black. That I couldn’t remember either generated perhaps more suspense
around that plot point than the filmmakers intended. Riddick toys with the
group, enflaming their fears and exacerbating tensions between the two crews in
the hopes of sneaking away with one of the ships. It’s basically a cat and
mouse plot with a bunch of tough mice and one very cool cat.
Once again the intriguing universe of sci-fi potential is
grounded and squandered in rote thrills done generically and stale interactions
between typical character types. The most anonymous people die quickly, the
slimiest ones get their long-delayed comeuppances, and those who are nicest
survive while Riddick himself lives to fight another day, of course. (Maybe.) The
longer the movie goes, the more predictable and dull it becomes. Glimmers of
suspense arrive. There’s a fun scene involving the bounty hunters debating
whether or not Riddick has tampered with their own trap and thus worry that it
might literally blow up in their faces. But then the moment passes to be
drowned out by dialogue scripted with a tin ear, including an especially
egregious bit of objectification late in the game that removed the last shred
of my patience. Soon the whole thing devolves into endless sequences of
shooting at creatures and hunting for spaceship parts. I suppose Riddick is only a small genre picture
that doesn’t get up to much, but it’s far better the less it tries.
