Film Review: Riddick

Like a jacked, sci-fi version of Michael Corleone in The Godfather series, Vin Diesel continues to translate his calm and silent yet commanding demeanor to "Riddick." As one of this summer’s banner space-age action films, "Riddick" comes as the sequel to "The Chronicles of Riddick" (2004).

Throughout the film, Vin Diesel’s character (Richard B. Riddick) attempts to escape from an uncharted, alien-filled desert planet on which he was abandoned at the end of the last movie. To do so, he schemes to steal a ship from one of the two teams of bounty hunters that track him to the planet. Alluded to in the prequel, Riddick has a large bounty on his head that is worth twice as much if he is returned dead.

Alongside his tamed werewolf-like ‘pet,' Riddick schemes and manipulates the 11 bounty hunters searching for him. The most prominent of these are Vaako (Karl Urban), who simply wants to learn the truth about his son’s death from Riddick; Dahl (Katee Sackhoff), who plays the token female-love-interest-with-attitude; and Santana (Jordi Molla), the sleazy, Hispanic commander of the second bounty hunter group. The supporting characters are by far the poorest part of the film in that they are stock characters or otherwise dull and cliché.

Furthering this point, there is a young, religious teenaged boy who looks like he should be sitting in AP Calculus rather than timidly blasting at alien scorpions. In the context of the movie as a whole, his character seems like a forced and desperate attempt to add some flavor to the motley band of hunters—especially when he starts quoting the Bible when the compound is stormed by hundreds of hissing monsters.

Character roles aside, the auxiliary actors are fine at supporting Diesel while he does what he does best—moving and speaking softly while carrying a big stick (in this case, a homemade three-foot switchblade/club). In 119 minutes there is enough head-slicing, alien-skewering and leg-snapping to make even the most avid action-lover feel more than satisfied. The only kinds of action missing were large explosions (maybe Diesel has had enough of those after seven "Fast and Furious" films).

"Riddick" only enjoyed a budget of 35 million dollars compared to the 120 million budget of its prequel, according to Moviefone. However, this decrease of nearly 75 percent didn’t hamper the special effects. I initially expected the effects to be near that of the first "Star Wars" or "Planet of the Apes" but was pleasantly surprised to see that the aliens and pterodactyl-like monster that appeared in the opening scene looked as real as the line at The Loop around 1 p.m. Even Diesel’s kidnapped dog-bat-hyena hybrid looked lifelike as it leapt and pranced around the desert.

As it stands, "Riddick" is well-crafted and beyond entertaining. While some movies sacrifice plot quality and creativity for more violence, writer and director David Twohy manages to pull both to the forefront of his latest work.