Screened Out: Riddick

[two-star-rating]Vin Diesel[/two-star-rating]

Riddick is brave, strong, scary, macho and extraordinarily stupid.

This violent sci-fi thriller is fashioned for the subtlety impaired – mostly males who like cracking sexist jokes and talking about each other’s balls. It’s the perfect example of what I call Testosterone Films – gory, demeaning and brainless – films that use machinery, muscle, and mass gore to pump up audience’s adrenaline.

And yet, it looks fantastic; the art direction, aliens, and stunts are top-notch. The score by Graeme Revell is spooky and epic. But – and I know I’ve said this before – I wish they’d spent a tenth of their special effects budget on the script.

Vin Diesel’s Riddick – which is the third and probably not the last in the Chronicles series of movies, cartoons, and video games – is one tough guy. After spending the last two movies surviving harsh planets, religious zealots, fascist armies, and mercenaries, he found out he’s not just a convicted felon. He’s a Furyan, one of a rare breed of super-humans. Riddick also has “eye shine” – a sort of luminous pupil that allows him to see in the dark, but requires him to wear goggles in sunlight…sometimes. To find out more about his origins, he gives up a monarchy to be taken to his birth planet. Instead, he gets dumped on another harsh terrain where he must battle strange monsters and lure bounty hunters to come get him out.

At one point, I thought, “Oh, this is like The Tempest, except they’ve replaced well-imagined character and plot with monsters and machine guns.”

The material is tailored to Diesel’s apparently limited acting repertoire. Like the other two films, it’s directed by David Twohy (who wrote Waterworld and only directs Testosterone Films).

What’s most offensive about this is how the very few women are treated. One character is a tough-as-nails lesbian soldier that the men either try to rape or convert. We get a few shots of her naked – because Testosterone Films need to have breast (even if it’s lesbian breast). Riddick – with his clever plans, survival instinct, and low, spooky growl – seems the only one man enough to convert her. Yup, it’s that demeaning.

[rating-key]

With Testosterone Films, you’re not shooting for character development. You want blood, degradation, special effects, and lines that would make anyone with an IQ over 80 wince. Why am I giving it two stars? Well, for two reasons: it is visually stunning, and when a film like Riddick sets the bar so incredibly low and then clears it, you have to give credit that the filmmakers might have known what they were doing all along – given the Testosterone Film audience what they want.

For me, the characters may be brilliant tactical fighters, but they’re otherwise dull. There’s really no arc to this. The only question is who’s going to die by Riddick’s hand and who’s going to die by the creatures. Maybe a few will survive, but we don’t really care. In fact, I didn’t even care if Riddick bit it.