Movie Review - The Chronicles of Riddick, Dark Fury

I am a fan of the Riddick movies and quite like anime too so I thought I'd give this a go, its set between Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick and does feature the voices of Vin Diesel as Riddick, Keith David as Abu the Imam and Rhiana Griffith as Jack (who is the original Jack in Pitch Black). Nick Chinlund also features as the voice of Toombs (from The Chronicles Of Riddick).

The character animations of the lead characters are pretty good and fairly faithful to their look in Pitch Black, Vin Diesel manages to recapture the world weary tones of Riddick perfectly almost as though he'd never stopped playing the role. As far as the rest of the cast go some might recognise the voices of Dwight Schultz (better known from The A-Team & Star Trek Next Gen & Voyager) and Tress MacNeille (from The Simpsons & Futurama).

The film starts with a ship containing Riddick, Jack & Abu being captured by Mercenaries and Riddicks rather clever ways of avoiding detection and killing some of them. We discover that Chillingsworth the leader of the mercs captures and freezes Furyans & other criminals, displaying them like art or trophies.

Toombs is defrosted (as all the Bounty Hunters are also kept in suspended animation until needed or their predecessors are killed) and Chillingsworth asks Riddick to show her how he works (revealing she's a psychopath) by making him defend Jack & Abu from 2 alien creatures.

Riddick also shows an incredibly creative solution to having a bomb implanted into his neck using it to escape so Chillingsworth sends every living thing at her disposal after Riddick. Riddick leaves a trail of his own blood allowing Jack & Abu to get to the flight deck where they are recaptured by Junner, Chillingsworths 2nd in command.

At this point in the feature the animation style becomes very abstract, characters are taller and their limbs are longer (its almost as though they had switched artists as well as artistic styles here) and this switch is very evident during Riddick and Junners fight which ends in Riddick fulfilling his previous promise or threat to Junner with a great deadpan line perfectly delivered afterwards.

There is a rather interesting double twist ending which I won't reveal and Abu's feelings about Jack will eventually prove to be correct. For such a short feature (just under 35 minutes) they manage to pack a lot into it but I would have liked to have seen another 20 minutes of story as I felt they barely used Toombs or the cyborg creature.

I'd recommend this to fans of the Riddick franchise and its also a very good stand alone piece of anime in its own right with plenty of action, excellent characters and very good quality animation and illustration.