This is the third outing for Vin Diesel's apocalyptic styled character Riddick, who always seems to end up abandoned on desolate planets, fighting to protect himself from creatures of the night, helped only by his unique sense of survival, supreme fighting skills and an ability to see in the dark.
Maybe I should have paid closer attention to the other movies Pitch Black (2000) and Chronicles of Riddick (2004) as well as a TV movie?? & games of the same name but sadly I didn't, so when this third outing started offering flash backs I had no idea if they related to any previous movie and as such - was totally lost for about the first 30 minutes of this film. Sorry!
So - possibly offending the 'Die Hard' Riddick fans out there I'm going to casually skip to where I managed to gain focus which is when Riddick activates an outpost beacon, knowingly drawing two ships of bounty hunters to his destination to chase his well sought after bounty and assuming they want his head - sees this as the only way off of this abandoned and horrific planet and has to either win their trust, or defeat them trying!
This wont be the longest blog every written as the movie really does just plod along aimlessly. Funnily enough I'm going to compare this to Predator (Schwarzenegger - 1987) and bear with me but you'll see why in a moment...
You can easily tell who's going to get picked off next and seeing the cast include one female (she'll obviously survive) a number of goofy ex marines (they'll die) and Batista from the W.W.E (who manages to hold them off a little longer, but also dies) you quickly realise that in all honesty - its just a space aged version of the Arnie classic, but with worse acting! (Predator had Jesse 'The Body' Ventura, also W.W.F - in its day) Comparable? you decide.
The saving grace is the monster effects - Riddick's the pet Hyena / alien dog (?) although weird is quite endearing but even that is drastically let down by the awful CGI of the 'Harley Davidson' styled hover bikes / speeders that in all honestly look like they have been superimposed on backdrops with blu-tac and being even more honest - with today's technology available, the 'Return of the Jedi' Speeder chase through the Ewok's Forrest moon of Endor (filmed 30 years ago) was far more believable! Shame on you!
Like I said, If I had paid more attention to the earlier movies then I may have a better word to say but don't get me wrong - I'm still loving the Diesel and Fast & Furious 7 (2014) and xXx: The Return of Xander Cage (2015?) are right at the top of my watch list.
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