Riddick

Riddick - Dir. David Twohy (2013)

"You're not afraid of the dark, are you?"

Before he became Dominic Toretto, Vin Diesel was Richard B. Riddick, an escaped convict with special eyes that allowed him to see in the dark. The anti-hero was introduced in Pitch Black, an effective B-movie where Riddick and a motley group of survivors fought for their lives on a desert planet. Pitch Black was enough of a hit that Diesel took a larger role in crafting more of the character's backstory. The result was The Chronicles of Riddick, a gothic space opera with five times the budget of its predecessor. Diesel obviously dipped into his experience playing Dungeons & Dragons to turn Riddick into the last remaining member of a warrior species known as the Furyans. The bloated mythology introduced Elementals, Necromongers, and the Underverse to deaf ears as "Chronicles" became a critical and commercial failure.

Riddick was put on the shelf, but Diesel believed in the property enough that he negotiated for the rights from Universal in exchange for a cameo in The Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift. Diesel's passion was such that he mortgaged his home to help raise the money needed to complete the third film, simply titled Riddick.

Riddick ditches the elaborate fantasy elements and returns to his roots as a badass killing machine. In a nod to King Conan, Riddick has grown weary of the throne as Lord Marshall of the Necromongers. Betrayed by the ambitious Lord Vaako (Karl Urban), Riddick is stranded once again on a desolate planet populated by a vicious menagerie of beasts.

The first act of Riddick resembles a Heavy Metal version of Wall-E with Riddick raising some sort of Doberman-hyena hybrid while battling H.R. Giger-inspired scorpions. Riddick fights his way across the wastelands to a remote outpost in order to activate a distress beacon. The signal alerts two rival teams of mercenaries looking to cash in on the substantial bounty on Riddick's head.  There's a skuzzy, patchwork team headed up by Santana (Jordi Mollá) and muscle-bound Diaz (WWE's Dave Batista) and a sleek, militaristic unit led by Boss Johns (Matthew Nable) and sexy sniper Dahl (Katee Sackhoff). At this point, Riddick plays out like a horror film with the mercs being picked off one by one by a killer hiding in the shadows. Once the third act rolls around, the movie becomes a redo of Pitch Black as Riddick and his adversaries are forced to join forces in order to escape.

You get exactly what's advertised with Riddick. Writer/Director David Twohy offers up a straightforward action flick with Diesel growling in that deep, booming voice of his. There's not much in the way of subtlety here. Twohy establishes Santana as a sadistic scumbag by having him shoot a female prisoner (pop singer Keri Hilson) in the back as she flees. Don't worry the bad guy gets what's coming to him in the form of the grisliest decapitation outside of a Takashi Miike picture. It's also difficult to take the filmmakers' attempts at presenting a strong female character in Dahl seriously when she gratuitously appears in topless or when Riddick charmingly offers to go "balls deep" on her. Thankfully, Sackhoff's performance is good enough to crawl out from underneath such crude material.

Riddick is a marked improvement over the second installment and certainly more enjoyable than some of this summer's bloated blockbusters (The Lone Ranger, R.I.P.D.), It won't be considered classic cinema, but fans of Riddick and Vin Diesel will be satisfied.

Rating: ** (*****)

Total Recall

Total Recall - Dir. Len Wiseman (2012)

Philip K. Dick is one of science fiction's most renowned and prolific authors. His works have been adapted into feature films numerous times with varying results. While it didn't exactly capture the spirit of the original short story, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," Total Recall has etched its place in the movie history as a classic action film. And so it goes that Hollywood combs its own past successes in search of a quick buck.

The remake is set during the tail end of the 21^st century in a world ravaged by global war. The only countries left standing are UK, now known as the United Federation of Britain, and the former Australia, now called the Colony. Instead of Austrian powerhouse Arnold Schwarzenegger, we have Irish bad boy Colin Farrell in the lead role of Douglas Quaid, an unassuming factory worker from the Colony. He and hundreds of other blue collar joes commute to and fro aboard the Fall, a massive transport system that tunnels through the center of the Earth. Quaid is listless about his mundane life, despite being married to the gorgeous Lori (Kate Beckinsale). One day, he decides to visit Rekall, a company that purports to realize your deepest fantasies through implanted memories. Just as the technicians at Rekall are about to put Quaid through the procedure, they discover his mind is already full of false memories. Armed gunmen burst into the building shooting everyone before Quaid guns them down with shocking ease.

Quaid learns he may actually be an agent for the resistance against the corrupt Federation chancellor Vilos Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston). His "wife" Lori attempts to kill Quaid at every turn and the only one who may be able to save him is a beautiful freedom fighter named Melina (Jessica Biel).

Mars and mutants are no more as the remake keeps its feet firmly planted on Earth. In place of exotic, red sands, we have a futuristic cityscape paying homage to Blade Runner (another Dick adaptation) and Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Due to rampant overpopulation, the Colony looks like a dozen Hong Kongs built on top of each other. Technology has yielded innovative devices such as a cell phone implanted into the palm of your hand and an army of robotic police sentries. In fact, Quaid works as a riveter ironically building the very automatons that will oppress his people. The robots serve a secondary function as a method to sanitize the violence of its R-rated predecessor to a palpable PG-13. Quaid rips the arms off a machine rather than a human being and doesn't spout a witty one-liner afterwards.

Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall was marked by gratuitous nudity and over-the-top violence. It possessed a satirical take on America's culture of consumerism and capitalism, which was also heavily present in Robocop. Len Wiseman's remake lacks any of the campy charm Verhoeven injected in favor of a pedestrian actioner that could have rolled off the same assembly line as its robot police force. Wiseman, who previously helmed the first two Underworld films as well as Live Free or Die Hard, is a decent action director, but one without an innovative bone in his body. Two of the major set pieces involve a flying car chase and a parkour inspired foot race through the rooftops of the vertically stacked Colony. Neither of them offers genuine thrills though the CGI is impressive. One sequence that could have been unique was a zero gravity shootout that is all too brief. Wiseman even cribs from the JJ Abrams playbook by punctuating Recall with obtrusive lens flare.

Fans hoping for a more faithful version of the source material will be disappointed. The screenplay was written by Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium) and Mark Bomback (Unstoppable) with an uncredited rewrite by James Vanderbilt (The Amazing Spider-Man). All three authors skew too closely to the first film and never blur the line between reality and fantasy. The original Recall suffered through nearly fifty rewrites and at one point had David Cronenberg, whose forte was mind fucking the audience, attached to direct. While Verhoeven's Recall merely touches upon the possibility that Arnold may still be at Rekall, the remake never offers anything more than a straightforward narrative.

For his part, Colin Farrell gives a solid performance, but plays it too cool at times. He's always in control of the situation and never as befuddled as Arnold. Whether or not that was an intentional choice by the former governor, I'll leave it up to you. Kate Beckinsale isn't as sultry as Sharon Stone, but she's far more ruthless. Lori is Cohaagen's primary enforcer and pursues Quaid with the dogged determination of a T-800. Jessica Biel doesn't leave much of an impression and Bryan Cranston is rather wasted in his scant role as the villain. The same goes for Bill Nighy as clandestine revolutionary Matthias.

Total Recall or Total Rehash? In spite of some significant changes, the new Total Recall is almost step-by-step a straight remake of the original film, but without any discernable personality. All the three-breasted hookers in the world can't help them there. If you haven't seen the original movie, you may find the remake to be a passable action flick.

Rating: ** (*****)