Riddick

Riddick 

  Surprisingly, this follow up is actually pretty entertaining. Riddick is on another planet marooned with people and monsters wanting to kill or capture him. Riddick is a fun action/sci-fi movie that harkens back to Pitch Black, while still moving the overall Riddick story forward. Riddick is a lean and mean movie that actually works on the simple level of he's on a planet and wants to get off that planet.

Riddick gets stranded. People want to kill him and there are monsters. That pretty much sums up the movie. Two groups of mercs want to kill or capture him. One group wants to see him dead and the other side wants to take him alive for personal reasons. There is a looming threat on the horizon in the form of these scorpion-like creatures. And, the creatures will kill everyone if they don't get off the planet.

Unlike the second live action movie, this movie is clearly a hard R-rating due to the front nudity, gore and violence. When people die, you get to see the splat and their twisted remains. Some of the CGI deaths aren't great, but it is good they didn't shy away from the gore. Riddick does some really evil things to the people out to kill him, and it just fun seeing him kill these people. And, that's one of the reasons I like his character because he's an antihero through and through. He just happens to do some good things along the way.

I also like that they mixed three concepts into one movie. We actually get a direct payoff to the leadership position that they left Riddick in the last movie, and how he gets stranded on a planet. The movie also ties into the first movie with a certain character being tied directly into a character from the first movie.

I think that Vin works in this role, but he doesn't work for many roles. He doesn't talk much and let's his action speak for him more than anything else. I also like some of the other character actors in the story. It seems to harken back to the first movie's brand of strange characters.

Riddick is Vin's go to character I believe and I'd to see more of this character in further adventures. There are a few things that didn't work, like I wanted to see more of interaction between the two factions of mercs. Both the Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick mix well. Since the budget was much lower and the movie broke over even, we may see another Riddick movie. I certainly hope so.

Grade: B+