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Pitch Black, the first collaboration between writer-director David Twohy and Vin Diesel, stands as a model genre movie, presenting an ingeniously taut narrative while also giving Diesel ample room to develop an antihero for the ages. The success of that film led to the unexpectedly baroque The Chronicles of Riddick, which greatly expanded the scope, but to somewhat diminished effect. The duo's third go-around wisely returns to the roots of the character, delivering a small-scale, gleefully vulgar film that occasionally resembles a berserk sci-fi version of Man vs. Wild. Featuring some way-cool critters and no shortage of gallows humor, it knows exactly what it is: half B-movie, half awesome 1970s van art. Quickly dispensing with the ornate mythology of the last installment (respect to Karl Urban for returning, however briefly) , the story finds Riddick left for dead, on a planet where absolutely everything wants to eat him. As he begins his quest to dominate the local flora and fauna, matters are complicated by the appearance of two teams of bounty hunters (including Katee Sackhoff and the gargantuan Dave Bautista) searching for his chromed dome. Twohy keeps things mean and reasonably lean throughout, giving the squabbling mercenaries some enjoyably hissable personality traits while hurtling toward an intense siege finale. Fun as Riddick's second half is, though, it's that primal, largely nonverbal first section that makes the film really work, paring back the character to his rumbling alpha-male essence as he pummels his way up the food chain. At a time when most entries in the genre either swell to ill-fitting blockbuster proportions or devolve into winking irony, there's something rather admirable about those just content to deliver the disreputable goods. Long may Space Conan reign. --Andrew Wright

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