After the bloated motion picture that was “The Chronicles of Riddick,” filmmaker David Twohy and star Vin Diesel return for “Riddick,” the third in a trilogy which began with the riveting “Pitch Black.” This sequel proves to be a return to as the story here is a lean one and is not about to overwhelm us with too many plot points. Also, it proves to be a stand-alone film which does not require you to view the previous installments (or “The Chronicles of Riddick” at the least) to understand all that is going on.

As the movie starts, Riddick (Vin Diesel) is now King of the Necromongers, but he ends up being betrayed by his supposed followers when he is left for dead on a planet which he is led to believe is his home world of Furya. From there, this anti-hero struggles to survive in a hostile environment where all these scorpion-like creatures and dog beasts are out to eat anything that moves on at least two feet. To make matters worse, bounty hunters are once again on his tail as he is forced to expose his location in order to find a way off of this barren planet.

What I found interesting about “Riddick” is how being King has somehow robbed this anti-hero of his abilities to survive. Diesel has made it no secret of how much he loves playing this character, and he invests Riddick with everything he has. Whatever you may think of his acting, you cannot say “The Fast & The Furious” star is not dedicated to giving this character the respect he deserves. Riddick is a bad dude, but like the best anti-heroes in movies, I still found myself rooting for him.

This sequel is truly a passion project for Diesel and Twohy more than anything else. Because “The Chronicles of Riddick” was a big budget studio movie that didn’t do well commercially, the two of them ended up having to raise the money independently to make this one a reality. Going from a budget of over $100 to one of under $40 million may have forced them to cut a lot of corners, and this is probably not the “Riddick” movie they originally envisioned doing. Still, I liked what they were able to come up with given the limited resources at their disposal.

One of the joys of watching “Riddick” is seeing how Twohy deftly skewers a lot of sci-fi clichés and wonderfully plays on the bounty hunters’ collective fear of their prey. Once the hunters arrive on this barren planet, Riddick leaves them a warning to leave one ship behind for him or suffer the consequences. Right away, you know that a majority of these characters are screwed. The question is, how are they going to die? There’s a great scene where they think Riddick has gotten into one of their storage compartments which is protected by a highly explosive device. Did he or didn’t get inside? That’s the question. Whatever the answer is, it leads to one of the film’s most wonderfully suspenseful moments.

Among the crew of bounty hunters is Katee Sackhoff whom we all know and love for her work on “Battlestar Galactica” and “Longmire.” She plays Dahl, a female mercenary who can dish it out as much as the men can and then some, and the punches Dahl inflicts on the male population she is forced to deal with are exquisitely painful to say the least, and they leave scars which will not be easily forgotten. Sackhoff is awesome in a role that definitely reminds us of how much we love her work, but she isn’t just playing Starbuck all over again. Dahl makes it abundantly clear at one point that she doesn’t fuck guys, and Sackhoff leaves you wondering just what exactly her character means by this. Remember, a single word never has just one definition.

Also in the cast is Jordi Mollà who has been nominated three times for the Goya Award for Best Actor, but none of those nominations include the performance he gave in Michael Bay’s horrifically bombastic “Bad Boys II.” Here he plays Santana, the leader of one of the bounty hunter groups, and Santana does very little to hide just slimy of a bastard he is. Mollà clearly relishes playing such a despicable character, and I got a kick watching him go over the top as he hunts down his prey. I don’t think it’s giving away too much to say that his character gets the painful fate he so deserves.

Then there is Matt Nable who plays the leader of the other bounty hunter team (who have much better equipment by the way), Boss Johns. I have no idea if his mother gave him that name, but I can only imagine the playground beatings this character got as a kid. Talk about a name to live up to!

Anyway, Nable, a former professional rugby player, does good work in conveying the conflicted emotions of his character as it turns out he needs Riddick for more than just a simple bounty, and it gives this sequel a complexity I did not expect it to have.

Dave Bautista, a former WWE wrestler who has since given memorable performances in movies like “Blade Runner 2049” and “Spectre,” plays the most bone crushing bounty hunter of all, Diaz. With Bautista in the cast, we know he and Diesel are going to have an all-out fight. And yes, it is quite the fight.

Most of the visual effects we see here are rendered in CGI, but that’s understandable given the movie’s budget. While the overuse of CGI effects in movies tends to drive me crazy, many of them look really good, and the alien landscapes are memorably illustrated. Riddick also gets to adopt a dog in the process, and the dog turns out to be one of this sequel’s best characters. Despite all the snarling, this dog is a cuddly little beast at heart.

It is also great to see Graeme Revell back composing the score for “Riddick” as he also did the music for the previous two films as well. It also marks a welcome return to the electronic elements he utilized so well in both “The Crow” and “Dead Calm.” It’s a wonderful reminder of how Revell doesn’t always need a full orchestra to create suck a compelling score.

“Riddick” is not a great movie and does not reinvent the wheel for either the action or science fiction genres, but it kept me entertained throughout. It also says a lot about Diesel and Twohy that they managed to bring this character back to the silver screen despite the commercial disappointment of “The Chronicles of Riddick.” The fans still wanted to see Diesel’s most favorite character make a return to the big screen. It took almost a decade for this to happen, but Diesel and Twohy came through even though they had fewer resources to work with.

And now we have news that a fourth “Pitch Black” movie is in the works. I am intrigued to see what Diesel and Twohy come up with next, and it is nice to know Diesel has another character to rely on other than Dominic Toretto.

* * * out of * * * *