Turok: Son of Stone DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

This one surprised me a lot, and not for how movies usually surprise me. I'm not surprised at how good or bad it was, but I certainly was surprised at how violent this Turok: Son of Stone cartoon was. In terms of violence, this is like the 300 of cartoons, and it's not too shabby of a movie at all.

You probably either recognize the game from either the long-running comic book or the video game from the 90s. If you're not familiar with the character, this movie is essentially about a warrior named Turok (Adam Beach) who comes out of exile after a violent encounter as a child that almost killed his brother, to save his village from the evil Chichak (Robert Knepper). The flick starts out innocently enough, with Turok and his brother as younger boys are met by some older indians from their enemy tribe. After slaying the enemies with such rage that almost kills his brother, he is sent into exile by the tribal leaders, and in exile he stayed until called upon by his brother's son to help the village. However, in trying to track down Chichak, Turok and Co. wander into a Lost Land filled with dinosaurs and massive violent creatures that they must also try to escape.

To be honest, I DID NOT expect that level of violence from this at all... and I liked it. It gets pretty damn graphic, like crazy Japanime style almost with blood and limbs flying freely and stylishly through the air. I thought there'd be some battles and crazy dinosaur stuff, sure, but it was ratcheted up to a level I didn't expect from this sort of movie. It's a pretty solid story as well, but it gets a tad corny and predictable in parts and Adam Beach's voice work as Turok falters semi-frequently, but he's pretty good throughout.

Most of the other voices are a little too over-the-top most of the time, and while the script from Tony Bedard does engage you, the iffy voice work does get a bit distracting at times. Still, the stylized animation and direction from Curt Geda, Dan Riba and Frank Squillace, paired with the story are usually more than enough to keep your attention.

All in all, this is quite a surprising little flick, for those unfamiliar with Turok, and for those who are, this should be quite a treat.

The only thing we get here is a Total Turok featurette, which delves pretty deep into the history of Turok going all the way back to the comic book which started in the mid-50s. If you're a comic book fan, the first 10 minutes might be fascinating, but it wasn't insanely exciting for me. Once we get past all the comic history lesson, and get into the movie stuff, it gets fairly interesting. They talk about the story, the animation, the score and even with the accurate portrayal of this particular Native American tribe. The whole thing is a little over 22 minutes long and, even though the comic stuff goes too long, it's still worth a look-see.

The disc is presented in the widescreen format, in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

The sound is handled through the Dolby Digital 5.1 format.

The packaging is fairly well done. The front has a big title card on top, with a big shot of the dinosaur roaring over Turok. The back has a few random pics, a solid sysnopsis, small special features listing and the billing block and tech specs. I thought it was kind of funny, however, that the warning about graphic violence is way at the bottom.

Turok: Son of Stone is an altogether solid ride throughout, with some eye-popping animated violence that makes you wish they made more cartoons that way.