r_emmet’s review published on Letterboxd:
Universal allowed Vin Diesel to make this as a sweetener for his return to the Fast & Furious franchise. More importantly, it got David Twohy another directing gig. He's only made seven films in twenty years, but he's as sure a bet for cheap genre thrills as any director out there.
This one is split into three classic scenarios. The first is silent survival horror, the second a clattering many-against-one action film, and the finale a locked-room siege picture. The visual scheme shifts with each section. Twohy stays close on Diesel as he recovers, pulls back in longer shots for the action section and its string of mouthy mercenaries, and combines the two in the finale, in which the monstrous and the human battle it out. On a miniscule budget by blockbuster standards, the film takes place on one sand-strewn set expanded by green screenery. It's the actors who have to make it look bigger, and Jordi Mollà does so in a hilarious performance as the inept sadist Santana - all greasy hair and blustering bravado.
Diesel loosens up his usual stone-face with a few smirks and his gritty basso profondo laughter. It's clear Riddick is more comfortable in the muck than in the seat of power at the end of THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, the misbegotten world-building exercise that preceded this one. Having already made its budget back, here's hoping Universal keeps indulging Diesel's Riddick fetish to keep them in Furious cash.