THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK

US, 2004, 120 minutes, Colour.
Vin Diesel, Judi Dench, Thandie Newton, Karl Urban, Colm Feore, Linus Roache, Keith David, Alexa Davelos.
Directed by David Toohey.

Riddick is Vin Diesel, playing the character introduced in David Twohey’s Mars actioner, Pitch Black. It is said that there are Vin Diesel fan clubs. The appeal eludes me. He is one of the most po-faced, unsmiling, uncharismatic screen presences – no touches of humour, no irony, no lightness.

The plot is akin to a Star Trek adventure but the audience needs to be practiced in remembering the names of distant planets and galaxies, especially when some of their names include numbers and they miss some of the action wondering which planet is being attacked and which one saved.

And Judi Dench is in it! She, Colm Feore as the arch villain who demands conversion to his somewhat obscure religious stances or brain-washed slavery or extinction, and Linus Roache all pronounce their dialogue as if this really was an important chronicle. Vin Diesel and the mercenaries use dialogue that sounds like blunt, crass and cussing leftovers from The Fast and The Furious (and the director is to blame because he has written the screenplay).

The sets and action are impressive as are most of the effects, although just hiding behind a rock or in a cliff crevice on a planet surface called Crematoria (with temperatures in the hundreds) seems sufficient to stop being crisped.

It is more a descendant of episodic cliff-hanging old serials than the more recent space adventures – and this review has avoided the obvious ‘riddickulous’!

1. The popularity of Pitch Black? The need for a sequel? Vin Diesel and his starring role as Riddick? A follow-up and background to Pitch Black? The impact of the sequel?

2. The technical aspects: the galaxies, the planets? The special effects? Space travel? The make-up for the various characters and races? Features, armour? The surface of the planets? The caves, the heated surface? The cathedral-like halls for the Necromongers? The musical score?

3. The dialogue, the mixture of the rhetorical and the trite and crass?

4. The plot, comprehensible? The explanations of the Necromongers? The people from other planets, their being captured, forced conversion? The brainwashing and torture? The different planets and their needs? Riddick and his being hunted, coming to save the oppressed people? The different backgrounds of the characters?

5. Vin Diesel’s screen presence, unsmiling? The lenses in his eyes? His goggles? His being pursued through the ice and snow, evading capture, destroying the helicopter team? His coming back to the planet? Imprisonment? The background history, five years on the run? The relationship with the young girl and wanting to save her? His being imprisoned, with the group of rebels? The confrontations with the mercenaries? The confrontation with the lord marshal, with the priest? His stances, the action adventure, the confrontations and duels, leaving the group and escape? The final confrontation with the marshal, his seeming defeat, his being saved by Vaako? His future? The lack of personality for such a leader?

6. The Necromongers, the lord marshal, his conversion experience, tyranny? The priest and his status, his converting the newly-captured? The irony that he was a Furian, from the same planet as Riddick?

7. Riddick, the confrontation with the Imam, his sense of betrayal?

8. The young woman, her past relationship with Riddick? The escape, the action adventures, her being captured, brainwashed? Her death?

9. Dame Vaako, her assistance to the lord marshal, advice, her reliance on Vaako, his heroics, the priest trying to sound him out for rebellion? The fights, her presence at the end? Her relationship with Vaako, her hopes for the future?

10. The mercenaries, paid to hunt Riddick, used by the Necromongers? Their crass approach to life?

11. The credibility of the plot, the interest in futuristic life in other planets, the action adventure? How well did they fit together?