'Chronicles' benefits from Diesel power

Both science-fiction action films and Diesel's career have gone steroid in the intervening years, so here's a big-budget new Riddick movie from "Pitch Black" writer-director David Twohy. In fact, "The Chronicles of Riddick" is being positioned as the first in what is hoped will be a series that fuses aspects of "Star Wars" and "The Matrix." The similarities don't end there.

When a giant black statue head fills the screen at the very beginning of "Chronicles," I thought the Wachowski brothers had somehow pulled a bait-and-switch and were coming at us with "The Matrix Regurgitated." It turns out that the ships of the all-conquering Necromongers just look like the Wachowskis' climactic Machine-God. Not coincidentally, Diesel comes off as a beefier, less considerate Keanu Reeves. Riddick is drafted against his will to save the universe, the planet of Helion Prime, the human race, and the benign spirit beings known as Elementals, who are represented in the film by an ethereal dowager empress named Aereon. Understanding that there's nothing like a Dame, the producers have cast Judi Dench, who flickers in and out of visibility as if her agent hadn't fully committed her to the role.

Fans of muscular sci-fi and teenage boys of all ages will probably kick my rating up by at least a star, because, really, "Chronicles of Riddick" is a perfectly acceptable entry in the summer-behemoth genre. The beetle-black CGI spaceships cross ashen skies, the fight scenes are filmed with remarkable stop-time panache, you could cut the pulpy comic-book doom with a plastic knife. Riddick's silvery eyes, often covered with welder's goggles, make you less aware you're dealing with Diesel, who, in any event, swaggers less and gets down to business more.