Riddick. (15)
Directed by David Twohy.
Starring Vin Diesel, Katee Sackoff, Jordi Molla, Matt Nable and Karl Urban. 119 mins.
Sometimes I am genuinely floored by my own stupidity. In the final week of August I was stuck in the most terrible of dilemmas: two films, one night, an impossible choice. On the Thursday should I go to a screening of The Great Beauty or Riddick. I will grant you Sophie’s choice was a tricky one, but when there is no right choice there’s no wrong choice either. When you cant win, you cant lose either. What kind of a man can be torn between Paolo Sorrentino and Vin Diesel?
I went for the former which was clearly the correct choice, it was one of 2013’s very best films, (see below) but the knowledge that this was once a difficult decision, a dilemma, is something that haunts me. Now, with the DVD release of Riddick, I can appreciate just how foolish I nearly was.
Riddick, as you could be forgiven for not knowing, is the role that made Diesel something approaching a star. In 2000, fresh off a role in Saving Private Ryan, Diesel starred in the surprisingly good spaceship-menaced-by-monsters flick, Pitch Black. There’s nothing quite like that feeling of satisfaction of coming out of cinema having seen something that was a bit better than you expected it to be. Pitch Black is like one of those afternoons where you run into a friend and waste a few hours in the pub and have a great time. It something you can’t go back to, can’t recreate, you just have to let it go and be grateful it happened once.
This though is the second attempt to recapture the magic, after the 2005 sequel The Chronicle of Riddick. Diesel mortgaged his house to help fund the film and supposedly only agreed to rejoin the Fast and Furious films to get the rights to the character back. It isn’t a terrible film but you wonder why he would go to those lengths if you’re just going to come up with something as modest and unremarkable as this.
The new film brings back the stranded on an alien planet scenario of Pitch Black but this time Riddick is the unseen danger as he prey upon two competing crews of mercenaries who have come to hunt him down. Given the modest budget most of the effects are decent enough though the flying bikes look atrocious. Twohy gives all the daylight scenes a golden yellow hue that makes the film look like it was shot from the other side of a tank of urine. The dialogue though is terrible throughout and the last ten minutes are laughable.
The main problem is that it just isn’t remotely exciting or gripping. Everybody talks about how tough they are and tough the situation is, but nobody does much of anything and seemingly insurmountable odds suddenly become easily surmountable. This is particularly harmful in the last third the alien menace finally presents itself, creatures buried in the surface that are released by the arrival of rain. They initially seem fearsome and all the characters hyped up the impossibility of their situation; but the moment they buckle down to it, they are easily brushed aside. All these buffed up muscle men totter around flexing and bulging and scowling menaces at each other, makes promises of imminent carnage but when it comes it is fleeting and unsatisfactory. Dramatically it is the equivalent pavement outside the local club at kicking out time on Sunday morning but in space and with the lady from Battlestar Galactica screaming Leave It He’s Not Worth It
Directed by David Twohy.
Starring Vin Diesel, Katee Sackoff, Jordi Molla, Matt Nable and Karl Urban. 119 mins.
Sometimes I am genuinely floored by my own stupidity. In the final week of August I was stuck in the most terrible of dilemmas: two films, one night, an impossible choice. On the Thursday should I go to a screening of The Great Beauty or Riddick. I will grant you Sophie’s choice was a tricky one, but when there is no right choice there’s no wrong choice either. When you cant win, you cant lose either. What kind of a man can be torn between Paolo Sorrentino and Vin Diesel?
I went for the former which was clearly the correct choice, it was one of 2013’s very best films, (see below) but the knowledge that this was once a difficult decision, a dilemma, is something that haunts me. Now, with the DVD release of Riddick, I can appreciate just how foolish I nearly was.
Riddick, as you could be forgiven for not knowing, is the role that made Diesel something approaching a star. In 2000, fresh off a role in Saving Private Ryan, Diesel starred in the surprisingly good spaceship-menaced-by-monsters flick, Pitch Black. There’s nothing quite like that feeling of satisfaction of coming out of cinema having seen something that was a bit better than you expected it to be. Pitch Black is like one of those afternoons where you run into a friend and waste a few hours in the pub and have a great time. It something you can’t go back to, can’t recreate, you just have to let it go and be grateful it happened once.
This though is the second attempt to recapture the magic, after the 2005 sequel The Chronicle of Riddick. Diesel mortgaged his house to help fund the film and supposedly only agreed to rejoin the Fast and Furious films to get the rights to the character back. It isn’t a terrible film but you wonder why he would go to those lengths if you’re just going to come up with something as modest and unremarkable as this.
The new film brings back the stranded on an alien planet scenario of Pitch Black but this time Riddick is the unseen danger as he prey upon two competing crews of mercenaries who have come to hunt him down. Given the modest budget most of the effects are decent enough though the flying bikes look atrocious. Twohy gives all the daylight scenes a golden yellow hue that makes the film look like it was shot from the other side of a tank of urine. The dialogue though is terrible throughout and the last ten minutes are laughable.
The main problem is that it just isn’t remotely exciting or gripping. Everybody talks about how tough they are and tough the situation is, but nobody does much of anything and seemingly insurmountable odds suddenly become easily surmountable. This is particularly harmful in the last third the alien menace finally presents itself, creatures buried in the surface that are released by the arrival of rain. They initially seem fearsome and all the characters hyped up the impossibility of their situation; but the moment they buckle down to it, they are easily brushed aside. All these buffed up muscle men totter around flexing and bulging and scowling menaces at each other, makes promises of imminent carnage but when it comes it is fleeting and unsatisfactory. Dramatically it is the equivalent pavement outside the local club at kicking out time on Sunday morning but in space and with the lady from Battlestar Galactica screaming Leave It He’s Not Worth It
