9. Riddick – Pitch Black
We’ll gloss over the overly-ambitious mythology building of The Chronicles of Riddick and the unpalatable misogyny of Riddick and focus here on Vin Diesel and David Twohy’s excellent and under-seen sci-fi thriller. Riddick is a criminal, finally captured and being transported on a ship which has the misfortune to crash on a seemingly deserted planet. Alas, they are in fact not alone and once the solar eclipse kicks in, the unpleasant beasties currently staying underground will come up to feed.
Riddick has polished his retinas so that he could see a little better in the dark prison he used to inhabit and quickly shows himself to be industrious, highly-trained and utterly lethal. Given how quickly the aliens polish off anyone they get their claws on, Riddick scores lots of points here for taking on two of them armed with nothing but a sharp knife.
Most Bad-Ass Moment – Finding a blind spot
