Riddick: Unrated Director's Cut (2013)

Director: David Twohy

Cast: Vin Diesel, Karl Urban, Dave Bautista, Matthew Nable, Katee Sackhoff, Jordi Molla

Country: United States / United Kingdom

Rating: R 

Run Time: 119 minutes

After nearly nine years since The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), David Twohy and Vin Diesel brought Riddick back from the grave with the third live action installment of their underrated sci-fi series. Many viewers and action fans may or may not remember the Riddick series at all since its first two installments were all the way back in 2000 and 2004.

Pitch Black (2000) began the series with both a hard "R" rating, a small scale story, and a low budget. The Chronicles of Riddick on the other hand chose to be entirely unique and expanded Riddick's universe to a Dune / Star Wars level of grandiose space opera. However, due to the whopping $100 million budget, Twohy and Diesel settled for a PG-13 rating, essentially a kiss of death to action fans. The film was also unfortunately a finacial and critical flop (but not to me, I love the Unrated Cut of the film).

Now that Diesel is big box office dollars again thanks to Fast Five (2011), Riddick was allowed to return to the big screen. Twohy was smart and brought back the three most important elements of Pitch Black's success: a hard "R" rating, a small scale story, and a low budget. Read on to see if Diesel and Twohy were able to resurrect their favorite anti-hero...

"Let me just slide on by here you thank you."

Riddick finds himself stranded on yet another unfamiliar and distant planet in the aptly named Riddick. We flashback to reveal how Riddick found himself in such a mess. After taking over the Necromongers and becoming Lord Marshall at the end of Chronicles, Riddick quickly became bored with his title. He soon longed for his lost home world, Furya. Lord Vaako (Karl Urban) claims that he knows exactly where Furya is because he was apart of the campaign to overthrow the planet long ago.

After Vaako sends some of his troops with Riddick to find the planet, Riddick realizes that he has been duped. The Necromongers strand Riddick battered and scarred on a random sunny and dry planet filled with poisonous creatures, hungry dogs, and no way out. In order to escape the planet, Riddick must activate a homing beacon in order to hail a ship to come find him. However, Riddick's beacon activation brings nothing but bounty hunters.

Riddick (2013) harkens back to the small scale storytelling that Pitch Black nailed so well. Riddick ends up becoming another Pitch Black by the end when Riddick and a group of bounty hunters have to fight off hordes of hungry aliens. We just have to sit through a very long and slow second act to get to it. The film also packs the "R" rated action that left the franchise back in Chronicles. The harsh language, graphic nudity, and intense gore is amped up higher than any Riddick film before. One character's head is literally sliced in half down the middle by a machete! It doesn't get any gorier than that (until the top half of the character's head slides off to reveal their brain and tounge, ew).

Necromonger Fashion.

The absolute best thing about this film is the first act. After having fallen off of a cliff, Riddick must heal his wounds and survive the wild creatures of the planet. He soon discovers that in order to proceed towards the more habitable area of the planet he must make his way through a small crevice in a mountain. That area of the mountain however is guarded by poisonous mud creatures that look like two legged creatures with a scorpion's tale. Riddick takes his time and makes himself immune to the creatures, crafts a bone sword that he can use to decapitate them with, and hunts for food. He also befriends an alien dog and strikes up a cool friendship with the creature.

This whole survival portion of the film was just great. I wish the entire film had been like this. With little dialog and slow but efficient storytelling, David Twohy and Vin Diesel were crafting a very true to character Riddick film like no other. Once the film gets past the amazing opening flashback and this great survival act, the film goes downhill for me. But we'll get to that in a minute.

I also adore the film's gorgeous color scheme. The film uses dark blues and orangish browns to beautiful effect. The entire flashback sequence and final night time scenes look great in blue. Everything else in the film looks pretty yellow, brown, and orange. I love an action film that can find a way to distinguish its settings with varying colors. Therefore, I think that Riddick is the best looking of the three films.

Best friends forever.

The special effects in the film are also worth mentioning. If you go back and watch Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick, the CG effects are pretty weak. While they aren't "X-Men Origins: Wolverine terrible", they are pretty lousy for early 2000's films. This film finally seems to strike that perfect balance between good looking computer graphics and sweet practical designs. Whenever Riddick is battling one of the mud creatures in a close up shot, the creature is completely practical and it looks great. The CG in the film's backgrounds and for the alien dog all look great too. For a film made for only $38 million, Riddick proves that you don't need $200 million to have great effects.

Riddick is also pretty light in the action department. While Pitch Black was almost barren in terms of action, The Chronicles of Riddick proved itself to be a full blown action fest with numerous shootouts, fight scenes, and battles. Riddick saves most of its action scenes for the final fight between the humans and the mud monsters. However, the best action scenes occur early on in the film. Riddick has an exciting fight with one of the mud monsters and its the highlight of the film if you ask me. He also gets to kill a few Necromongers during the flashback. Therefore, the film has more action than Pitch Black but nowhere near as much as Chronicles.

Okay, so the film has those things going for it. But what did I not like? For starters, the second act drags the entire film down. Riddick vanishes from the film completely as numerous bounty hunters become the main focus of the film. All of these bounty hunters are boring and annoying though. They all spout groan worthy dialog like, "I don't f*** guys, but I'll f*** them up if I have too," and "You're name is...too late." I felt like all of these terrible lines and annoying bounty hunter characters would probably appeal to middle aged men who go crazy for crap like that. But not me, nope.

Side by side, Johns and Riddick.

So yes, I got really tired during the second act and completely lost interest. Therefore, by the time the characters all gather up at the end to take on some mud monsters, I simply didn't care anymore. I seem to be encountering this problem a lot lately with several action films I have seen recently such as Max Payne (2008) and Death Wish 3 (1985). It seems that many action films in general have trouble creating an engaging and successful second act. I know many films like to start big and/or end big, but I think that it's important to be exciting and thrilling throughout the entire picture and not just the bookends.

The performances in the film all range from good to bland. Vin Diesel and Karl Urban are great as their respective franchise characters. Urban only appears as Lord Vaako from Chronicles for a few minutes but his time is well spent. After three films, Diesel has made Riddick his own and I love to see him in the character. Riddick's outfit and goggles also look cooler than ever. It seems that the art department finally found a way to make Riddick look truly awesome instead of lame and muscly like in the previous films.

All of the bounty hunter performances are fairly bland. Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) can't save her character because she has to spout such horrible lines. Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) also isn't given much to do except fight Riddick at the end of the film in a short but satisfying fight. My least favorite character in the film is the lead bounty hunter named Santana (Jordi Molla). Even though he is quite evil, I think he is given far too much screen time. I just wanted to see more of Urban's Vaako character over these bland and pitiful characters.

I also want to point out that I viewed the extended cut and highly recommend it to fans. It expands the mythology with some extended scenes and ends the film on a cliffhanger instead of the lame ending the theatrical cut got. There are two additional character deaths but no major violence additions.

Until next installment...

Riddick is a pretty solid sci-fi actioner. It suffers from a slow middle act, annoying characters, and awful dialog. However, for all of the film's faults, there is still a lot to love. After nine years, it was nice to finally see Riddick return to the big screen and in glorious "R" rated action as well. I enjoy the opening act of the film with all of my heart and wish the entire film had just been a stripped down survival film. Overall, Riddick gets the job done and delivers a small but essential installment by returning Riddick to his primal and savage roots. I highly anticipate the next film because Twohy and Diesel have promised that it will be a large scale film along the lines of Chronicles. If the two can deliver an "R" rated Chronicles sized film, than I will be one happy camper.

Rating: 8/10 - Riddick makes for fun and violent sci-fi entertainment. I'll take a true science fiction film with human characters and a nice mythology over the dull CG ridden crap that Michael Bay is calling science fiction any day.

Franchise: The Chronicles of Riddick
Pitch Black (dir. David Twohy, 2000)
The Chronicles of Riddick (dir. David Twohy, 2004)
Riddick (dir. David Twohy, 2013)