Review: Riddick- Is it Riddick-iculous?

Vin Diesel reprises his role as the anti-hero nobody can seem to catch in Riddick. After a very brief reminder of what happened at the end of the last film, The Chronicles of Riddick, the audience is given a puny excuse for Riddick’s exit from the Necromonger’s society and he finds himself stranded on an unfamiliar planet. The whole film’s focus revolves around him being chased by eleven bounty hunters and escaping the planet, leaving the entire exercise feeling like an unrelated, unimportant side excursion from the real Chronicles of Riddick.

While the first chunk of movie is a dull sequence of Riddick wandering the desert (for nearly half an hour!) once the bounty hunters arrive in the second act, things pick up. The finale features an all out brawl with some solid fight choreography and plenty of snappy one-liners from Riddick, but for the most part the film’s pretty sparing with its action.

Riddick swings like a pendulum back and forth from being interesting to aimless, and averages out as being kind of… average. Diesel plays a great anti-hero, and the love he has for the character shines through, keeping him entertaining to watch. There’s only one girl character in the entire movie (played by Katee Sackhoff), and her shift from the badass bounty hunter she’s introduced as to the flirty kitten she is at the end of the film is irritating and senseless. This isn’t the worst film out in theaters right now, but there are better options. Riddick will still be mediocre on blu-ray.

Action Rating: 2 Shiny-Eyed Furyans, out of 5.

This is the Action Flick Chick, and you’ve just been kicked in the ass!