Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)My mind hasn't been boggled in a while -> The very first StarWars did me in, and then various parts of The Lord of the Ring years later. Other than that I'm not one who stares at the screen in awe of special effects. In fact, the bore me very quickly. What I likes about the original Riddick film, Pitch Black, was that, outside of the Alien knockoff monsters, there was very little in the way of large scale special effects. In many ways, it was an intimate thriller rather than a vast drama.
So I really wasn't prepared for what appeared on this screen as the film unrolled. It sneaks up on you as it opens with Riddick's attempted capture by Toombs, a bounty hunter. The irritated (and very hairy) Riddick sets out to find out who put the bounty on his head and discovers that he is being recruited to stop the conquest of space by the Necromongers. These latter are truly the knights of total badness. Their goal is entropy - the total destruction of life and rebirth onto another plane, the Underverse. The Necromongers, despite a truly heroic culture, are so bad that Vin Diesel comes up smelling like a rose.
Why hire Riddick? The theory is that sometimes you need to fight evil with a different evil. Riddick is one of the last Furyans, a people who met the Necromongers and lost. An entire male generation was destroyed right down to infants strangled with their birth cords. If anyone would want to destroy the Necromongers Riddick should. Or he would if he cared, and starting out, he doesn't. But as he walks out the Necromongers arrive. Diesel gets caught in the combat, captured by Toombs and dumped on a prison planet where he finds Kyra (who was Jack in the first film).
When the Necromongers show up again hunting for Riddick, the whole thing falls apart. Riddick, who has been pretty even tempered for a stone killer, gets really, really mad. Now it is the hunters who are hunted in a spectacular display of violence, betrayal, and architecture. Yes, I said architecture.
Whoever did the set design and effects for this film (hats off to director David Twohy) simply went insane. The planetary and prison settings were delightful on their own (imagine being chased across a planet by a sunrise that will burn you to a crisp), but the work on the Necromongers is simply amazing. They have been designed from the ground up. Clothes, armor, spaceships, interiors, culture, etc., etc., etc.
Between the effects and the settings I had to watch the film twice to notice that there really was a plot, albeit a skeletal one. And half the actors to reasonable jobs with a script of a maximum of 2,000 words. Purists who demand great art and drama may be dismayed, but this film was downright fun to watch. A sci-fi barnburner with all the stops pulled out. If you like fast, furious, and dirty, Riddick is the hero for you.
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The Chronicles of Riddick (Widescreen Unrated Director's Cut) (2004)CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK UNRATED DIRECTO - DVD Movie
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