Film review: Riddick (15)

Thirteen years on from the originating movie Pitch Black, Vin Diesel returns as the resourceful, muscle-clad, gravel-voiced ex-con Riddick. And he's still sporting those Day-Glo contact lenses and swimming goggles that allow him to see in the dark. This third instalment (after The Chronicles of Riddick) finds him on a lonely planet, where he's been left for dead by a duplicitous commander of his former empire. Here be monsters, notably a swarm of pincered creatures nicked from – where else? – Alien, and, what's more, a bounty hunter (Jordi Mollà) determined to "bring back Riddick's head in a box". Good luck with that!

Director David Twohy keeps the action fairly tight, even if some of it has the weightless look of a computer game. Ridley Scott's classic is ever-present in the lineaments of plot, setting and design, though I did like the original touch of using "ghost" as a transitive verb: "to kill", of course.