It's all about the hardware in the sci-fi adventure The Chronicles of Riddick, which reunites Vin Diesel with the role of the surly convict hero he played four years ago in the much better and much creepier Pitch Black.
Riddick has heavy duty guns, an elaborately carved knife, enemy troops in head-to-toe molded armor, whooshing mine tunnel cars and unusual looking spaceships which seem not terribly aerodynamically sound. There are also broad computer-generated vistas of a planet under attack, vast legions of otherworldly troops and a prison planet called Crematoria where the nighttime temperatures of minus 300 degrees become an incinerating 700 degrees when the sun comes up.
It's all very impressive to look at, but these wonders overwhelm the long, complex and often plodding story whose characters barely register. Nevertheless, Riddick marks the teaming of Diesel and his sluggish speech patterns with those of the elegant and eloquent Oscar-winning Judi Dench. Think of it. Diesel and Dench together at last.
Diesel's Riddick, on the run from bounty hunters, lands on a distant planet which is about to be attacked by the heavily armored Necromongers. This race destroys anyone who does not accept their new religion (which is never explained very well) while they are headed ever onward in a search for their Valhalla, which is called Underverse.
Riddick is enlisted to be a sort of one-man army against the Necromongers, something he passes on before being nabbed by a bounty hunter and sent to Crematoria, where he meets the now grown-up little girl he rescued in Pitch Black, a film which had limited release but first unleashed Diesel on the world. Riddick has silvery eyes that can see very well in the dark. This feature was of prime importance in Pitch Black, in which Riddick was up against flying pterodactyl-like monsters that only came out when their planet was shrouded in total darkness, but is only of marginal use in The Chronicles of Riddick.
Dench is a mysterious enemy of the Necromongers who appears and disappears in a puff of smoke, looking for all the world like Cinderella's Fairy Godmother without the bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.
The plot, by writer-director David Twohy, who also did the low-budgeted but more effective Pitch Black, veers between the adventures of Riddick on the dismal-looking Crematoria prison planet, and the cool steeliness of the Necromongers.
The film's most exciting moments come when the sun rises on Crematoria and everyone who is outdoors must rush into the shadows or be toasted to a crisp. The Necromonger tale takes on Shakespearean overtones as Thandie Newton's slinky Dame Vaako prods her husband Vaako (Karl Urban) to overthrow their leader (Colm Feore), a half-dead creature who retains power by stealing the souls of others.
The Chronicles of Riddick is an old-fashioned space adventure with pretensions. But its thinly drawn characters and Diesel's thudding delivery keep getting run over by the glitzy special effects, which are the only reason to see this film.
**
The Chronicles of Riddick
Starring: Vin Diesel, Thandie Newton, Karl Urban, Colm Feore, Linus Roach, Keith David, Yorick van Wageningen, Alexa Davalos, Judi Dench.
Rated: PG-13, contains violence.
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