Riddick is not that great of a movie. Its dialogue horrendous, plot thin, and characters forgettable. But then again, what were we expecting from this movie? Were we expecting an Oscar winner or were we expecting a fun time at the movies? Hopefully you were expecting the latter option because that’s exactly what you got. Besides that wonderful dialogue, Riddick is filled with fun action, great visuals, and Vin Diesel’s pecs and is one I recommend checking out in IMAX.
Riddick takes place after the events of The Chronicles of Riddick. Riddick (Vin Diesel) isn’t too pleased with the role of Lord Marshall of the Necromongers so he offers Commander Vaako (Karl Urban) the Lord Marshall role for a ship that will take him to Furya. Vaako agrees but Riddick’s ship lands on a desolate planet and is eventually buried alive. Riddick breaks free and sets off an emergency beacon so a ship will come to bring him to jail, but obviously Riddick just wants to take over the ship. And, of course, nothing goes right.
While the plot of Riddick is thin with next to no subplots of any kind, it’s almost kind of refreshing to get a straight-forward and mostly simple movie. Could more of the supporting characters have been fleshed out? Absolutely, and that would’ve benefitted the movie but that really doesn’t become too much of a bother when you’re watching the film.
What does become a bother is the dialogue which is awful to say the least. Riddick easily has some of the worst lines in any movie this year. You will groan at some of the garbage spoken in this movie and the rest you will laugh at. I didn’t laugh at a single joke in the movie but I laughed at some of the “normal” dialogue spoken. Honestly, Riddick is one of the most unintentionally hilarious movies of the year. Turn off your brain COMPLETELY and get ready to laugh (and roll your eyes at some of the other dialogue).
The actors in this movie do the best they could with the dialogue. Vin Diesel is once again great as Riddick. He could probably play this role in his sleep, but he still does a good job. The supporting cast, while fine, never stand out, but that’s mostly a problem with the script. The bounty hunters in the movie are given nothing to do and have no room to stand out. The performances are completely fine (and I give them props for being able to speak this dialogue without dying of laughter) but their characters are so one-dimensional and generic that you don’t care about really any of them.
What the movie Riddick does very well, is action. The action scenes in this movie are a lot of fun. They’re not over the top like the Fast and Furious films but they’re entertaining as hell and have great visuals to boot. David Twohy might not be the best writer but he can certainly direct some sweet action and make the film overall appealing to look at.
I saw this film in IMAX and I was surprised to find that the movie took up the whole screen sometimes. Actually, come to think of it, most of the movie isn’t letterboxed which is strange since the film wasn’t filmed with IMAX cameras. It’s even more strange that the entire movie isn’t letterboxed. If most of the scenes were converted, why not convert the rest? It became a little annoying having to come in and out of letterbox so frequently. This is still better than nothing but far from perfect.
THE VERDICT
There are bad movies and there are legendary bad movies. Riddick isn’t either depending on what you want from this film. If you even remotely judge this movie by its story and performances, you’ll hate Riddick. But if you look at the film as the “turn off your brain” and laugh your ass off masterpiece that it is, you will really enjoy the movie. Don’t take the rating below seriously, take it on an entertainment scale.
For reviews and more from me, Petey Oneto, you can check out my blog but be sure to check back to Resident Entertainment for more of my posts in the future.
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