Third film in trilogy screeches to a halt

Banished from his home world, convict Richard B Riddick (Vin Diesel) awakens on a barren planet. He is joined by a canine companion – a Hyena-like wild dog that he nurses to health. When Riddick’s location is revealed, eleven bounty hunters arrive on the planet to capture him. Heavily armed, they have Riddick outnumbered and are set on taking him alive.

Judging from the beginning, I was expecting a different film to the one I got. After arriving on the planet, 10 minutes pass before a line of dialogue is spoken, with Diesel the only actor on screen. He spends this time fending off the planets carnivorous life in as violent a way as possible. Diesel disappears entirely for almost 20 minutes when the bounty hunters arrive, and the movie screeches to a halt without him.

None of the villains, including former wrestler Dave Bautista and Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff, show much personality and their methods were never entirely clear.

Riddick would have been a much better film with Diesel and his dog battling Aliens while surviving off the land - I am Legend in space. Derivative perhaps, but surely an improvement over Riddick.