Lost in space

Riddick
English (A) ¬¬
Director: David Twohy
Cast: Vin Diesel, Karl Urban, Katee Sackhoff
Rating: Average

When scenes from a movie are to be shot with a mostly-mum protagonist, a perfect scene setting, scintillating soundtrack and an unconventional camera angle are imperative to keep a viewer’s attention until dialogue takes over.

This movie fails to bring in that level of scenic beauty.

Riddick, the lead character, is a bounty-hunter convict with night vision. One expects more action than what the plot entails with that kind of a protagonist.

Instead of launching into the thick of it, the film first forces one to watch Richard B Riddick (Vin Diesel) traversing a desolate and barren expanse of land on an unknown planet, fending for himself in solitude sans monologue.

Unearthly creatures inhabit this land, one species being an animal that looks like a cross between a dog and a hyena, that are quite unsightly.

While scouring the planet, Riddick finds an old bounty-hunter base and uses a futuristic face-scanning device to send his location across a type of database, hoping to find a way to get off the planet.

Before you know it, people fly down on spaceships to retrieve him for bounty. From then on, Riddick and the counter-Riddick enter each other’s bases, much like a Goldilocks that doesn’t get caught, until Riddick decides to raise hell.

This movie is glacially-paced, making it impossible for a viewer not to think of a hundred different next moves, and is hence predictable.

The cinematography, however, does not have as many faults. Whatever little action the movie brings, it is done tastefully, even when it gets a little gory.

Vin Diesel, despite always having goggles on or night-vision blue irises, plays his part well in a way that the character can be empathised with even in an unconvincing and unrealistic setting.

Perhaps the one thing that makes this movie watchable, is that the character Riddick is reasonably intriguing.

The same cannot be said for the movie Riddick, apart from a select sci-fi loving audience.

The first line from the movie goes, “There are bad days, and there are legendary bad days.” Watching this movie could make your day “bad” if you are not one for gore, sci-fi and menacing aliens. If you are an impatient movie-goer, your day could be a “legendary bad” one.