The Chronicles of Riddick

Just had fun watching TCOR and am pretty happy about it. Good action, great visual stuff. A worthy successor to Pitch Black, though the two films are hardly related. Vin Diesel does a good and convincing job at playing an action antihero. As usual, Judy Dench adds to the film, even though her role is small here. The story is pure pulp SF and is short and predictable but is refreshingly dark and (mostly) unsentimental. It actually also has some interesting bits and nice side stories as a (smallish) bonus. Bits and pieces have been copied from Dune, without the film being a Dune copy. Compared to Dune, TCOR has more action and fewer Lynch oddities & boring bits. In my book, both films are good, about equally so.

Reading some of the other reviews, it seems that people are fairly polarized in their opinions of this film. Like most pulp science fiction, it takes a different sort of suspension of belief from that which makes usual films work. However, the action makes it a fair bit easier, and I found it a lot more engrossing and convincing than any of the five (ridiculous but entertaining) Star Wars films, the uniformly unwatchable Star Trek stuff, or, for that matter, most blockbusting light entertainments. But that is just me. If you hate Dune, exaggerated action scenes, or (minor) plot inconsistencies, then you probably won't like this film. Otherwise, chances are good that you will.