Movie review: ‘Riddick’

With the innumerable remakes, reboots and sequels deluging Hollywood recently,

“Riddick,” the third installment in the “Riddick” series, warrants anticipatory disappointment.

However, “Riddick” proves to be an exception, never rising above expectations for a summer action movie but still remaining an enjoyable distraction.

Taking place a few years after the last movie in the series, “Riddick,” written and directed by David Twohy, begins like many sci-fi action movies. The eponymous hero is deceitfully lured into a trap by Commander Vaako, played by Karl Urban, and left for dead on a desolate desert planet.

As he quickly adapts to the planet’s harsh environment and vicious creatures, Riddick, played again by Vin Diesel, sends a distress beacon in hopes of escaping and returning to his home planet for revenge.

The beacon attracts two teams of mercenaries: one a cutthroat band led by the beastly Santana, played by Spanish actor Jordi Molla, and the other a methodical team of professional soldiers led by Boss Johns, played by rugby player-turned-actor Matt Nable.

Each team has its own reasons for wanting to capture the valuable and elusive Riddick, leading to a violent cat-and-mouse game with a tenuous line between who is cat and who is mouse.

Despite the exquisite interaction between the characters, they are one-dimensional archetypes. Molla is the monstrous killer who is unsubtly groomed throughout the movie to make the audience hate him.

Diesel, as the nigh-invincible super soldier, has an endless ingenuity for the ridiculously deathly situations he constantly finds himself in.

Yet, unlike many similar films, this absent character development does not make the move unwatchable. As long as it is accepted as an exciting, fun blockbuster with none of the frills of an Oscar contender or film festival entry, it provides a relief from the multitudes of uninspired sequels in the market now.

The main problem with the flatness of the characters is the waste of Urban’s talents. After a surprisingly great performance in last year’s “Dredd,” the potential of this action star is only realized in a single disappointing scene with no action.

On a positive note, the writing infuses the movie with deadpan, wartime humor as characters joke in the brief silence following the death of one of their fellow soldiers, or as Diesel adds kitschy one-liners during moments of peril.

These jokes add accessibility by lightening the story’s violence and providing relief from the dark themes of betrayal and survival, however they occasionally fail to hit.

When one of the dog-like animals that inhabit the desert planet is offered a packet of crab enchiladas from Riddick, the animal proceeds to urinate on it in rejection, making it seem like the writers misconstrued their core demographic by about 15 years.

Such moments remind the audience that, at heart, this is just another attempt to reanimate a decrepit series and squeeze out a few more dollars.

The last third of the movie does seem to fall apart as it unsuccessfully replicates the plot of the first and best movie of the series, “Pitch Black,” when the mercenaries and Riddick must band together to escape the planet as a storm brings scorpion-like creatures upon their outpost.

Its obvious similarities to “Pitch Black” are lazy. Instead of adding to the series, “Riddick” rehashes old material that makes it feel like the same story with a few details changed.

As a movie to relax to and get lost in an absurdly structured sci-fi world, “Riddick” succeeds. However, those looking for a movie to think about that presents an original take on an old story will want to stay clear of this reboot.