Riddick: Rule the Dark |
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 • USA / UK • 2013 • 119m •    • Directed by: David Twohy. • Starring: Vin Diesel, Jordi Mollà, Matt Nable, Katee Sackhoff, Dave Bautista, Bokeem Woodbine, Raoul Max Trujillo, Conrad Pla, Danny Blanco Hall, Noah Danby, Neil Napier, Nolan Gerard Funk, Karl Urban. • Music by: Graeme Revell.  The infamous Riddick has been left for dead on a sun-scorched planet that appears to be lifeless. Soon, however, he finds himself fighting for survival against alien predators more lethal than any human he's encountered. The only way off is for Riddick to activate an emergency beacon and alert mercenaries who rapidly descend to the planet in search of their bounty. The first ship to arrive carries a new breed of merc, more lethal and violent, while the second is captained by a man whose pursuit of Riddick is more personal. With time running out and a storm on the horizon that no one could survive, his hunters won't leave the planet without Riddick's head as their trophy.
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Review:
Riddick is a mean killing machine; he has no remorse, no regrets and would do anything moral or immoral, good or bad to survive. But this is where the moral compass comes into play. Riddick would not forsake those who show mercy to him. He has the immense need to preserve the good and innocence in people who actually have it. This makes for the times Riddick would tend and take care of women (at least with the ones with fairly good moral standings) and children.
The movie Riddick comes after a long hiatus, almost nine years since the second movie The Chronicles of Riddick, and Riddick fans like me have been eagerly waiting for it since its announcement few years ago. When I heard that the charismatic and infamous Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace of Battlestar Galactica, Katee Shackoff, would be playing a bad-ass role in the movie, I was even more excited. There they were two of my favorite action heroes, male and female, and they were in the same movie. I just couldn't wait.
The Chronicles of Riddick was an epic adventure type of movie; Pitch Black was a survival horror. I liked the adventure movie too but Riddick really shines when he's cornered and kept in these survival mode situations. Riddick is not really a decorated general, born leader type of soldier that The Chronicles of Riddick leaves him to be, so it is said that he was betrayed, cornered and left for dead. That's cool, because that would turn Riddick to his survival mode; and now he's in a planet that is more hostile then the one in Pitch Black, that is supposed to be more fun.
Riddick the movie has a relatively bigger budget, and a slightly more glamorous star-cast then the first movie, but this one lacks where the first movie had most of its charm. The characters, other than Riddick, in this movie, have next to no significance. Even Dhal, the character of a headstrong woman mercenary played by Katee Shackoff, has not much of a character definition, or even a more prominent role. Riddick does everything here, and since he's highly qualified to do them, all the other guys just stand back and admire a legend at work and just step forward when it's their turn to die.
It really weakens the movie though, since we don't know much about the characters, we don't really care if they live or die, and their deaths, one by one, just seem like an excuse to stretch the movie. There is no suspense and thrill. Only time we feel some amount of thrill is when Riddick is in danger, and there could only be so many of these scenes. It would have been some fun if Katee Shackoff's character got into some trouble and kicked ass to get out, but oddly enough, despite her great demeanor as a tough girl, she never really steps away from the ship or the base. She has, as far as I remember, not one scene with her and one of the creatures in the same frame. That's not cool.
Vin Diesel is awesome as Riddick, he's always had been, and he single handedly with his presence, hold the movie together, but I always found Riddick the sneaky bastard more fun than Riddick the ultimate warrior, and this movie has none in the set of characters for Riddick to play mind games with. Everything happens so fast that they seem to have started without properly knowing each other. Riddick does try to pull a few strings in the heads of the other main characters when the movie starts but one of them an idiot, another one is genuine good guy (which makes playing mind games really hard) and the last one is a girl who seems to have done an advanced degree in putting up a wall in the head. She just could take any amount of verbal abuse and doesn't at all care for mind games. Ofcouse our good Dr. Riddick never really has enough time in this movie to show this side of his talents but then we only see his warrior side in a survival horror.
I had waited a long time for this movie, and this is not a bad movie, but it is not enough. It tries to be the same as the first cult classic in the Riddick series but it lacks the psychological profiles and even the character profile of the creatures that made the first movie such dark and grim horrorthriller. The likes of Katee Sackhoff, Bokeem Woodbine and Matt Nable, are almost wasted in the movie for the lack of good character sketches, and these are good actors. I really missed Cole Hauser's bounty hunter character and Radha Mitchell's ship pilot with a guilty conscience. This movie has none of those. It has good action, but in terms of action I think The Chronicles of Riddick was better. This movie, for me, is not up to par for my high expectations; but it's not because of Riddick's character. Vin Diesel still got it and I would still wait impatiently if they'd announce another Riddick movie, but I would have loved the writer to breathe a little more life to the other characters in this one.
Review by sworup_shakya from the Internet Movie Database.
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