The Chronicles of Riddick

by Bill Henry on Jun.11, 2004, under Bill Henry's Movie Reviews

Bill’s Review

Although critics love to carp about how bad the summer megabuck releases are, there is usually a baseline of cruddiness that they are unable to sink below. Even when such projects are hopelessly contrived, completely unwarranted by their initial chapters, and/or incompetently perpetrated, they are usually solid enough bits of entertainment with at least a modicum of charm leached from their more popular (and, often, better made predecessors). But then there is a movie like The Chronicles of Riddick and standards head for the sewer. It is difficult to recall a sequel this lacking in entertainment; which is a bit of a surprise considering that the first movie was not half bad.
A few years back, Vin Diesel made a sci-fi cheapie named Pitch Black. Set a few centuries in the future, a spaceship is stranded on a desert world that, thanks to multiple stars, is almost perpetually in the light. But wouldnâ€™t you know, the ill-fated cast just happens to show up on the day (or night) when the planet enjoys total darkness. Luckily, the ship is carrying a convict (VD) who can see in the dark and he will lead the escape effort as the planetâ€™s beasties come out to hunt. Leaving aside how night hunters evolved on a planet that seems very well lit and devoid of much for them to live on, the movie turned out to be passably acceptable. And when Diesel became an action star, just about every one of his previous efforts with the exception of Saving Private Ryan tried to cobble together a sequel and the money to pay Mr. Dâ€™s now $20 million salary. This is the movie he chose to do instead of The Fast and the Furious sequel. Think worse than 2 Fast 2 Furious if your mind can appreciate such minutia.
The Chronicles of Riddick picks up five years later. Riddick is still a fugitive, but now there is an extra price on his head. It turns out some people just want to set up a meet and figured to waste money on bounty hunters rather than just searching themselvesâ€”and this is the plotâ€™s intellectual high point. Figuring that one loses brain cells both watching as well as recounting what in other movies would be called the story, I will attempt concision. Nasty fellows called Necromongers attack entire worlds, convert the populace to their ill-defined religion, kill anyone who resists, and leave a bunch of ugly, skyscraper-sized idols behind while making their way towards some equally ill-defined Valhalla. The religion appears to attack the speech centers resulting in characters that mouth pretentious incoherencies. The responsible virus is so severe that it even turns Judi Dench into a jabbering imbecile.
Luckily, the time that many movies waste on narrative and character development is put into fight sequences and special effects, so audiences can plan on being entertained for perhaps five of the movieâ€™s 130 minutes.
One can only hope that supporting players like Dench, Thandie Newton, Linus Roche, and Colm Feore were nearly as well compensated as Vin and that they can now live off their Riddick checks while doing actual movies like the ones where we have actually seen them do some acting. As for Vinny, he owes everyone better efforts than manure like The Chronicles of Riddick. He seems to have some ability to be more than just the lighting double for the stunt men or the space holder for the CGI technicians. Audiences have already embraced him as the next big action star, but he owes them more than The Chronicles of Riddick. This movie is beneath even the acting abilities of Jean Claude Van Damme.