Last time I saw Riddick, I actually didn’t see Riddick for, like, a half hour. Judi Dench kept explaining the plot against my will. This time? Ah, this is more like it – Riddick (Vin Diesel) is trapped under a rock on a desert planet with wild dogs aware of his plight. That’s how you start an action movie – just get right into it. You have to earn backstory – let’s see how ball-bearing eyes faces down the Hellhounds with no weapons and a broken leg.
Now I don’t quite understand – is Riddick blind? That’s what I was led to believe, which is reinforced by the fact that he has marbles where his eyeballs should be … but then he sees better than everybody, especially at night. What’s up with that? Riddick seems like the kinda guy who seeks only the difficult path, as if attaining a goal with a minimal amount of work is somehow a cop out. It’s not just that he screws his armor into his own flesh. Wha …? Why? Case in point happens early on, when Riddick realizes the slightly-more-vegetated desert is guarded by a pack of combination scorpion-monitor lizard-giant snapping turtles. They’re kinda freaky and plenty dangerous. Even the Hellhounds have issues –this is one of those places where every living thing is a savage predator, like the Australian Outback or the U.S. Senate—so what does Riddick do? Well, what would you do? Cause I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be: capture a Hellpup, slowly raise it and build up an immunity, both you and pup, to freaky turtle beast poison, and bide your time over months to cross eight feet of water.
Luckily, this portion of the movie takes fewer than five minutes. What have they been living on? Why, freaky turtle beast meat, of course. Hold a sec … if you can just kill the things straight out , why … aw, forget it. And the truth is, this is entertaining. Riddick is about the freaky 
Diesel beast thriving where no one else can. Before long, there are bounty hunters after the Diesel beast. It’s kinda like Aliens if you wanted to root for the Aliens. A dozen soldiers with high powered rifles? Bah. You have no chance against the Riddick.
One of the hunters in particular, Santana (Jordi Mollà) is a loathsome slimeball. You’ll hate him the moment he starts speaking. It’s ok; you’re supposed to hate him. But watching him repeatedly take abuse is almost surreal. He’s combination villain/tackling dummy. I honestly wonder why people want these roles. Being a villain is time-honored and valuable acting tradition. We all know that at a certain age, you stop being the hero and you start being the bad guy. It’s fate. It will happen to Brad Pitt, Robert Downey, Jr. and dozens of other guys we root for just as it has happened to Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford. But being the guy who tries on repeated occasions to rape the girl, only to get his face busted in? Do you really want that role? The conclusion of this is the cinematic death of the year. I will say no more.
Have we now come to a time when Vin Diesel is the best in the action biz? There’s a spooky thought. I can’t deny the popularity of Fast & Furious or Riddick. I’m told xXx2 (x to the sixth?) is in the works as well. I’ll remind myself that once upon a time that title belonged to people like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Charles Bronson; it’s probably more curse than blessing.
Dropped down to desert from afar
The bald man battles singular
Those reptilian stings
Turtle/bear things
Dammit, I still can’t tell what they are.
Rated R, 119 Minutes
D: David Twohy
W: David Twohy, Oliver Butcher, Stephen Cornwell
Genre: The deliberate and the even-tempered
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Bounty hunters
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Peaceniks
