@ the movies: Chronicles of Riddick

It was a free promotional movie night so why not? Riddick is kind of Matrix (lots of hand-to-hand combat and gunplay) meets Lord of the Rings (multiple races and hints of mythology) meets Star Wars (high tech spaceships and some mysticism). I am guessing the audience was loaded with Vin Diesel fans because beats me what gets people in to see a movie like this aside from it being free.

Anyway, the special effects are not bad but clearly they don't have the near unlimited budget Jackson and Lucas work with. The fight scenes though vigorous don't have the detailed ballet quality of the Matrix. And as for establishing a mythology for the Riddick world, I didn't see the first film so I don't know the set up and to be honest the "hero" of the story is not clearly good nor bad and thus lacked the emotional punch that a more direct moral tale like Lord of the Rings had. I don't expect my movie heroes to be flawless but Diesel's character is somewhat ambivalent at times.

On a technical note, the sound and film editing at times wasn't as seemless as I'd expect. I'm not in the industry so if I notice it felt a bit odd then it must have been pretty out of kilter.

2 stars out of 4. If you want an action flick and aren't looking for anything too complicated, this film will do.

On a side note, will Alexa Davalos become a star? Some of the fans at IMDB seem to think so.