**/*** (2.5 stars)
Richard B. Riddick (yes, that is
his name) is back for a third outing and back on familiar territory. After
being betrayed and robbed of his Necromonger crown, Riddick is abandoned on a
sun-scorched planet where there are venomous aliens lurking in the mud, and
various other carnivorous species who want to eat him. Realising that the
planet isn’t as safe as first thought, Riddick advertises his whereabouts and
two teams of bounty hunters turn up just in time for rainy season.
If you’ve seen ‘Pitch Black’,
then you’ve seen this film too – the premise is exactly the same and the
outcome pretty similar as well. The film, however, starts out quite well and
seems to be quite promising. For the first twenty minutes or so, Riddick (Vin
Diesel) is the only human on screen and he pulls it off fairly well. In this
section, we get to see a more vulnerable version of the Furyan that we haven’t
really experienced before. We watch as he hones his skills after living the
life of luxury as Lord Marshall (cue some Vin Diesel nakedness) and adopts a
little alien puppy (warning: do not become attached). There’s a flashback to
Riddick’s brief stint as top dog, featuring a cameo from Karl Urban, looking
decidedly embarrassed to be there, but the opening part of the film plods along
quite nicely. However, with the arrival of the bounty hunters, everything
settles into a strict regime of ticking off undeveloped bad guys in a gruesome
fashion before the monsters arrive.
Rather annoyingly, director David
Twohy seems to think that women characters are only good for one things, and
that’s to get their boobs out. Dahl, the kickass female bounty hunter, is
constantly objectified by all the other men, and there’s a wholly unnecessary
scene of her taking a wash sans bra.
She’s also blonde, tall, big-boobed, oh, and lesbian – a teenage boy’s dream
come true and evidently Twohy’s as well. Even Riddick, who we’re meant to root
for, states that he’d like to be ‘balls deep’ in her. It’s all rather disappointing.
As a loud, brash and rather
ridiculous end-of-summer blockbuster, it works fairly well but there is nothing
of artistic merit to be found here. The opening part of the film is the best
bit, whilst the rest fades into mediocrity and misogyny.
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