The Chronicles of Riddick
This wasn’t on my list of “must see” movies for the summer, but as a sci-fi action flick I thought it was worth a try. I saw this on Wednesday night with my brother.
The movie is more or less a sequel to Pitch Black, which I saw at the drive in a few years back. Basically, the main character, Riddick, is the stereo-typical hard core criminal. He’s a killing machine, wanting pretty heavily by pretty much every star system. In this movie, we also find out he is a member of a race called the Furrians (not sure if I spelled that right). Riddick isn’t the only bad guy out there as a race of people called the Necromongers are out to conquer the universe, taking over world by world and converting people to their ways (can we say Borg?). The leader, the Lord Marshal, heard a prophecy that he would be killed by a Furrian. The rest of the movie is pretty much the realization of this prophecy. Along the way Riddick meets up with some people from the first movie, including “Jack”. Jack was a girl (though she disguised herself as a boy in the first movie) who idolized Riddick and wanted to be just like him. Well, apart from not looking anything like a boy now, she has done a pretty good job of idolizing him becoming a criminal herself.
Overall, the action scenes were okay, but nothing special. Everything was pretty predictable. But, there were some good lines and the idea of a penal facility on a planet that was 700 degrees in the sun and -50 on the dark side was interesting, but not totally original. The ship designs and architecture in the movie were great, though the fact that you had soliders of the Necromongers carrying modified battle axes and pole arms (along with their guns) was a bit annoying. Other than the intimidation factor I would see these older weapons as useless in a time when people carried guns.
Overall Rating: 2 out of 5.
Recommendation: Skip it and wait for it on HBO or at Blockbuster.