A couple years ago, my Gabbing Geek friends Jimmy and Ryan did a watch-through with me of the Fast and the Furious movies. They were fans, but I hadn’t seen any except the underwhelming first and was generally curious since the series somehow spawned a number of sequels that seemed to be very different from the first one that was basically a Point Break rip-off. Anyway, it was a fun seven weeks leading up to the 8th movie, and I ultimately had a good time. That actually made me a little curious about some of actor Vin Diesel’s work, specifically his Riddick movies.
Ryan and Jimmy seemed to believe that only the first of that series was worth seeing, namely Pitch Black. I still haven’t seen that one, but the second, The Chronicles of Riddick, was leaving HBO Max at the end of the month, so here we are.
Set, presumably, in the far distant future, the movie opens with some portentous narration introducing the audience to the Necromongers, a rather viscous “convert or die” bunch of guys who go around attacking planets, where they either slaughter everyone there or force them to convert to the Necromonger faith. But about that same time, wanted criminal Riddick (Diesel) discovers a former companion, one of the few who knows his location, put a one million credit price on his head, and Riddick is a man who values his privacy. The companion, an Imam (David Kieth) only put the price on Riddick’s head because he and some others, most notably the elemental priestess Aereon (Judi Dench giving the movie a touch of class but only a touch) to get his help. A prophecy suggests Riddick might be the last of a line of warriors, and he might be the one to take down the Necromongers’ Lord Marshall (Colm Feore).
Small problem there: Riddick doesn’t care. As Aereon’s opening narration suggested, there’s no force for good that can stop the Necromongers, so they’ll have to settle for a different kind of evil.
However, Riddick does learn a girl he used to look out for is in a prison on a planet where the sun shines so brightly that no one can live on its surface. Considering the Necromongers have the ability to rip someone’s soul out, aside from maybe these warriors that Riddick might be descended from, and that they are arriving on the planet the Imam calls home at about the same time Riddick is there, even if he doesn’t care to bring the Lord Marshall down, he will be sucked into this whole thing anyway., particularly with ambitious Necromonger Vaako (Karl Urban saying as little as possible) hot on his trail.
Diesel, in my experience, isn’t always the best actor, and characters like Riddick seems to be little better than good for a few monotone grunts. Then again, given his physicality as an action movie star, I always found Diesel’s best work was his voice work as the Iron Giant and Groot. Riddick is essentially an unstoppable anti-hero with glowing eyes that mostly allow him to see in the dark and that’s about it. Unfortunately, other members of the cast rise to the general level of Diesel’s performance, specifically Urban and Thandie Newton as Urban’s ambitious wife. Every performance just seems flat.
That said, there’s some interesting set and costume design on display. There was a lot of creativity to this universe, with helmets showing multiple faces, scuba-gear masks that seem to act as night vision to find heat signatures, and while the physics of that sun-drenched prison planet is a bit questionable, that seemed to be less of a concern than the aesthetic of the movie. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it struck me that this was a movie that had more ambition than talent in its execution.
Grade: C+
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