Riddick Review

Riddick is back and better than...Well, better than the last 10 years.

Betrayed by his own kind and left for dead on a human less planet, Riddick has to fight off an army of violent predators, more powerful and and dangerous than anything has ever come across before. And those are just the beginning of his problems. Now, a distress beacon brings down violent bounty hunters with one intention, to bring back Riddick's head in a box. Unbeknownst to them, this planet is not all desolate as it seems as they now have to put aside their differences and team up with Riddick if they want to get past swarms of monsters, and get off the planet alive. After the overly-bloated and monotonous Chronicles of Riddick 9 years ago, the expectations for the new installment were fairly low in my mind. Since Chronicles, Vin Diesel has been in not one, not two, but three new successful Fast and Furious movies, making his action-hero image quite expansive.
Finally, he is back and ready to fight for his freedom. The plot is fairly simple and resembles the plot of Pitch Black. The biggest downside to this movie is the pacing. The first 30 minutes of Riddick are actually a little boring. He is wounded and spends the first half hour getting back into better condition. While trying to improve his mental and physical strength, he comes across these Alien-looking predators and befriends a mutated dog. The movie really starts to pick up once the bounty hunters come down to the planet. Finally, Riddick reverts to his old persona of the hunter instead of the hunted. The violence and action in this movie are what you can come to expect from sci-fi action thriller nowadays. I'm not saying that's bad, but it's defiantly not ground-breaking. Once Riddick and the bounty hunters ban together to fight the army of monsters, we enter the best parts of the movie. It's peculiar that Chronicles cast over 100 million dollars to make, yet Riddick cost only a little bit more than 30 million to make. Proving that more money doesn't always mean better quality. Overall, it is a lot better than Chronicles and even though it is not a game changing thriller, it is likely to satisfy all Riddick fans and even satisfy most sci-fi action fans. Final Rating- B-