Runtime: 1 hour, 59 minutes
Rating: R
Director: David Twohy
Quick Impressions:
Last night I dreamed that Cate Blanchett’s character from Blue Jasmine was walking through a dark cave with some guys wearing futuristic gear. Suddenly, Jasmine froze and inhaled sharply. For some reason, the man next to her slit her throat. As if she didn’t notice, she said in that Jasminey voice of hers, “It’s right in front of us. Doesn’t anyone else see it? Isn’t it wonderful? It’s what’s been tracking us this whole time. Isn’t it amazing? It stopped here because it can sense that I’m wounded.”
What I remember most about Pitch Black is the part with Jack and the blood, so I assume this dream was my subconscious’s way of telling me that I was ready to watch Riddick. As the movie started tonight, however, I suddenly began to worry that maybe my subconscious was wrong.
I’m not ready to watch this movie, I thought in rising panic. Why didn’t I watch the other two again first? I have no idea what Riddick is doing on this planet. I haven’t seen Pitch Black in a hundred years! And even though when I was in grad school, my mom seemed to watch The Chronicles of Riddick like every single day, all I can really remember about that movie is Judi Dench teleporting around in a white tunic talking about “the Necromonger.”
Fortunately, as the movie went on, I realized that the audience is not supposed to remember how Riddick wound up stranded on this awful planet. After a few confusing minutes, we get an incredibly helpful, narrated flashback that serves as a bridge from the second movie to the third (or the fourth if you count the thirty-five minute, direct-to-DVD animated The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury).
I am happy to report that you don’t have to be well versed in the Riddick mythos to enjoy this sci-fi adventure. In fact, you could probably get by without watching The Chronicles of Riddick at all.
This Riddick has far more in common with Pitch Black. It’s similar to the first film in tone and structure and even contains certain plot elements that hearken back to Riddick’s earliest cinematic adventure. If I had to guess, I’d expect the next Riddick film (if there is one) to feature Karl Urban more heavily and tie up some loose ends there. But this movie really has no interest in the Necromonger or any of the complex civilizations they invade. Riddick is just about one guy outsmarting idiots, staring down monsters, being a badass. It’s definitely not hoping for an Oscar, but it’s a worthy addition to the franchise and a great staring vehicle for Vin Diesel.
Honestly, I’m not sure why it was released in September since there was plenty of room for a crowd-pleasing sci-fi, action comedy this summer, but the visual effects are less than stellar, so maybe that was part of it.
The Good:
This movie is a lot of fun.
So far, 2013 has given us mainly bleak, depressing sci-fi. Elysium is brutally dystopian, After Earth, boring and grim, World War Z, elegant but sober, Oblivion, slower and statelier than a royal funeral.
I went to Riddick mainly because it’s a major release, and I knew my husband would enjoy it, but to be honest, my expectations were low. It’s not that I expected Riddick to be bad. I just didn’t think it would be my kind of movie. The relative lack of advertising, the September release date, and the dark, gloomy movie poster collectively convinced me that this film would be gruesome, humorless, gritty, and soul-crushing.
But now why did I think that? Vin Diesel has always had a sense of fun. I should have given him more credit. Despite a slow beginning and a weak finale, Riddick is really fun to watch, and I had a wonderful time gasping and laughing and thinking all the while, He’s such a throw-back action hero! It’s like he’s from the past, not the future.
Arnold Schwarzenegger always dished out those wonderful, goofy puns. (“You’re fired!” from True Lies—that’s my favorite.) Bruce Willis loved to launch into laugh inducing conversations with himself. Mel Gibson gave the most amazing demented looks. Meanwhile, Vin Diesel really seems to like crazy sight gags and ridiculous threats that double as one-liners.
Logically, it should not be funny to watch people die, but in this movie, some of the biggest laughs come from gruesome death scenes. It’s not that we enjoy watching suffering. It’s just that the timing is so perfect that the whole situation becomes completely ludicrous. This happens over and over and over again. If Riddick were unaware of this phenomenon, it would be a bad movie (Sharknado bad instead of After Earth bad, maybe, but a bad movie nonetheless).
Don’t be fooled, though, Riddick isn’t only aware that these scenes make us laugh like crazy, it’s consciously going for the comedy. That’s the whole idea. Every scene is specifically engineered to make Riddick look like the biggest, baddest badass of all time, and Vin Diesel growls out his lines with admirable mock stoicism, but before long it becomes clear that he’s in on the joke.
Riddick is one amazing guy, a manly man so hyper-masculine yet kind-hearted and noble that he single-handedly takes on a gigantic, venomous scorpion beast with a hand-made axe while at the same time (and in one fluid motion), rescuing a defenseless puppy!
It’s not that the movie wants us to laugh at Riddick. No, he’s a really, really cool (anti)hero. The thing is, we are laughing, and Riddick is laughing with us. (And Diesel and the filmmakers are laughing even harder). By the time the credits roll, despite the grizzly carnage and staggering body count, it’s clear that a good time was had by all. I never expected the movie to be this much fun, but I can’t deny it was a blast.
Best Scene:
My favorite part in the entire movie is the whole “securing the perimeter” bit. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s hilarious. At first I didn’t know what to make of Jordi Mollà’s Santana. My initial thought was, This guy has potential, followed immediately by, He seems kind of weak. I can’t tell if he’s a good actor or not. I think he is, but this character is odd. (It doesn’t help that his name is Santana. It makes you think of Carlos Santana. And since he’s so intense about everything, including the delivery of his name, he comes across looking a bit ridiculous.) But as the movie goes on a little, you realize he’s supposed to be ridiculous, and this makes all the difference in the world.
It’s not that Riddick is so dumb it doesn’t know how to cast a clever, menacing antagonist. It’s that Santana is supposed to be a pride swollen, grandstanding idiot. He’s a little too nasty (and too important) to be comic relief, but he quickly becomes the butt of all the best jokes. Now you could call the script a little lazy because Santana is so conveniently reprehensible. He’s just there to give everybody someone to make fun of, beat up on, and seem better than. The thing is, this totally works. On paper it sounds really, unbelievably thin, but as the action unfolds, it’s just incredibly, fantastically, even viscerally entertaining.
I have never in all my life so thoroughly enjoyed seeing anyone else get repeatedly punched in the face. I’m just not really big on face punching. I’ve never been able to get into boxing (although my husband and I were quite mesmerized by an MMA fight we once accidentally caught in progress, and I still occasionally find myself playing Street Fighter II on virtual console, though even there I’m not big on punches to the face. I’d rather make Chun-Li turn upside down and use that flying helicopter kick).
My point is, when Santana gets punched in the face, my brain is confused, but my gut reaction is to grin. Some characters inspire love. Some inspire fear. Santana inspires schadenfreude. He exists for nothing else.
My favorite part in the whole movie is when we’re essentially told beforehand what Riddick has in store for all Santana’s guys, but Santana refuses to be warned until it’s already too late for most of them. There’s a series of misfortunes (and some of them are quite hideous), but this movie uses the old fashioned trick (too often abandoned) of priming the audience for something awful, then prolonging the tension just enough to make the eventual “shock” seem deliciously like a fulfilled promise.
Honestly, by the end, I found myself being pretty crazy about Santana. Right up to his final scene, he remained my second favorite character, which is odd because he’s odious in every way. Every time we see more of him, we discover some horrible new flaw in his character. When you realize he’s a rapist and a murderer, you think he probably couldn’t get much worse, but then somehow, he always finds a way to get worse. It’s all highly improbable but remarkably entertaining.
Best Action Sequence:
Like I said, seeing Santana get punched repeatedly in the face is one of the most satisfying parts of the movie. But the action sequence that I found really intense is a different attack on Santana, one where he is nearly killed until he turns the tables on his aggressor. This scene is better than some of the others in my book because of how profoundly it affects Riddick (and the audience), and it makes a still later scene featuring Santana all the more satisfying (basically because it alleviates our guilt for enjoying something so horrible).
Best Scene Visually:
This movie is going to make a lot of money from blu-ray sales, I am quite convinced. For one thing, the Riddick franchise has a lot of loyal fans. For another, Katee Sackhoff has a huge following of her own (thanks mostly to her iconic turn as Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica). She has a great part in this movie as the tough, wise-cracking Dahl, and one of Riddick’s strongest moments visually is Dahl’s shower scene.
As I read over that sentence, I notice that it unintentionally sounds like the cue for Bevis and Butthead style chortling, but I’m not calling attention to the scene because Sackoff is naked in the shower (though she is). Honestly, I like the use of mirrors in the scene. I think it’s one of the more cleverly conceived scenes in visual terms. Then again, I’m fascinated by mirrors. Katee Sackhoff enthusiasts may be fascinated by other elements entirely.
The lightning surrounded peak near the end of the film also looks rather iconic (though incredibly self-conscious. I mean, it’s kind of overdoing it a little, but clearly Riddick is not aiming for subtlety in anything).
Funniest Scene:
Maybe one of the best jokes in the entire movie is visual, but calling it out spoils the joke. Everybody is looking for Riddick. When the audience spots him, it’s hard not to laugh out loud.
The Performances:
Vin Diesel is clearly the star here. This movie is aptly named. The story is about Riddick, and the conflict is almost entirely generated (and at least partially resolved) by Riddick. And Vin Diesel is consistent in the part. He’s not an actor with much range, but he knows how to do what he does, and I’ve always kind of liked him (especially after hearing those stories of how he pursued Judi Dench for a role in Chronicles). On his own, he’s a little dull. But the trap he creates for everyone else is tons of fun to watch. In some ways, he’s kind of like the Road Runner. It’s not what he says or does on his own that’s particularly interesting; it’s the insane measures taken by everyone else once he starts to push their buttons.
Katee Sackhoff is presented in the second most favorable light as Dahl. We get the idea that she’s not as bad as the rest of them, that she might even join Riddick at some point and be a co-protagonist. And this is actually really weird because she’s just as relentless, ruthless, and determined to capture him as the rest of them. But maybe we (and Riddick) like her so much because she’s attractive and funny.
Matt Nable felt off to me right from the beginning. Finally I figured out what was bugging me about his character. He just seems too American, too bland. His voice is so, so terribly bland. In fact, it is so bland that I started to wonder, Is he an Australian pretending to be a boring American? Guess what? He is! Apparently, he’s also a former pro-rugby player. I was unimpressed by his performance at first, but as we learned more and more about his character, he began to improve. He’s actually pretty good in the interrogation scene, and he remains more interesting for the remainder of his role.
Karl Urban (despite what the previews suggest) basically has only a brief cameo in this film, but I expect to see him in a future Riddick movie (unless Star Trek keeps him too busy or this film doesn’t make enough money).
Everybody else in the movie (except Santana, who I’ve already mentioned) stays mainly in the background except for brief flashes. Of these supporting characters, I particularly liked Conrad Pla, Bokeem Woodbine, and Dave Bautista (who actually has a bigger part than most of them and does some great work in his one big showy scene). Nolan Gerard Funk is also good as Luna, but the character’s lack of development was a little frustrating. He feels kind of wasted.
The Negatives:
The beginning of the movie is very slow. For me, the highlight was the dog. (Well that and the tube of—what was it?—crab enchilada hash? Where did they come up with that one? Is that a product that actually exists?) I understand that these early scenes are important in terms of setting up the story, but they’re the least interesting part to watch. Riddick on his own is likable enough, but he’s much more fun when he’s got an audience to torment.
One thing that the beginning does right is establish a clear setting for the movie, and I think the planet looks pretty good. But in general, the CGI in this movie is not great. There are several scenes that look very…fake? I don’t know how else to put it. I mean, obviously Vin Diesel is not really on another planet when he announces, “I’ll ride it like I stole it.” But still, it’s hard not to think, “He’s riding it like he’s on green screen.” But I don’t really blame the movie for this. I get the impression that it didn’t have much of a budget, and telling an engaging story is far more important than special effects. Sci-fi fans can certainly overlook bad special effects. Often there’s no other choice.
The movie also has a weak finish. I mean the whole premise is completely contrived—just an excuse to give the audience an entertaining show. And we realize right from the start that the premise is contrived, but we quickly forgive and forget once all the bounty hunters show up, and the fun really starts.
The ending just isn’t all that satisfying, though. I’m hard pressed to suggest a better ending, but I’m positive this one doesn’t feel powerful or resonant. Honestly, it feels like this whole movie has just been about killing time until Riddick has his next big, epic adventure (which should involve revenge on Karl Urban).
Overall:
I don’t usually like dark sci-fi action films, particularly not when they’re released in September and seem more about pleasing a crowd than asking provocative questions. But Riddick took me aback by pleasing the whole crowd, me included. It’s really, really funny. Once the other characters arrive and the story begins in earnest, it feels a lot like a cross between Pitch Black, Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, and a Looney Tunes short. (And don’t let the last two titles throw you. I mean that as a compliment.) Vin Diesel’s latest turn as Riddick should please fans and benefit from good word of mouth. The box office gives us a lot of dark and depressing fare these days. It’s nice to see something that’s just pure (at times ridiculous, but never stupid) entertainment.