Stealth Entertainment
By Scott Lumley
September 25, 2008
It's really hard to take a character like Riddick seriously. But it's even harder to take this movie seriously. The primary bad guys in this film are the Necromongers, a group of pain-immune hard asses that are built like tanks and about as deep as a coffee cup. They're led by the "Lord Marshall" as he slaughters his way across the stars casually recruiting followers and committing genocide as they go. The Lord Marshall is also "Half Dead" yet fully conscious, awake and now possessing super powers. They don't explain how he became half dead or why that conveys these abilities upon him, and honestly, I'm grateful. I don't know if the writers thought this all the way through, but I'm pretty sure if they tried explaining this half dead thing it would end up sounding a whole lot like the force.
It seems like I'm pretty down on this film, and I am a bit. Pitch Black was completely amazing despite the fact that the primary bad guy in that film was an ecological impossibility. Chronicles doesn't really come close to the streamlined and tense scripting that Pitch Black had, and it seems like every time the writers got stuck they threw in an absurd action piece to mask just how flimsy the whole premise was.
It's not entirely fair to judge a film by its predecessor, but this is technically a sequel to Pitch Black so I've got to hold it up to that standard.
Really, the best part of the film occurs when Riddick gets sent to an ultra secure, maximum security, infested with gigantic wolf-cats, prison that is located on a dead rock in the middle of space. He meets up with Kyra there, while Toombs negotiates a reward for his "capture" and Riddick sets about proving that he is the biggest, baddest dog on the cell block. It takes about three seconds for him to do that, and in the process he gets united with Kyra. To say these two have a lot of fun in prison is like saying that Bush may have made some bad moves with the economy.
Unfortunately, the prison scenes only last about 40 minutes tops, and then the Necromongers show up again, which naturally forces a showdown between Riddick and the Lord Marshall. It's a nice touch that the writers didn't give this film the normal happy ending, but thankfully, it is an ending.
In the end, The Chronicles of Riddick is a strange exercise in film. There are few likable characters, the locations are bizarre and gloomy and heavy violence permeates nearly every scene. The lead character is a borderline psychopath and the bad guys are hard to buy into. While there are some stunning action sequences in this film, by the end of the movie you're just thankful that it's over. And any time you watch a movie that cost $110 million to make, you should be able to expect a better result than this.
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