Storm review by The Grim Ringler

STORM

You can’t help but shake your head in disbelief sometimes after reading the copy that is written to promote some movies. It’s as if these people read a synopsis of the film, never see a moment of the movie itself, and then write the words that will serve to create the impressions people have on whether to rent the thing or not. I can’t imagine how frustrating that is for filmmakers. We have that sort of situation with STORM, a film that is claimed to be a little MATRIX and a little NIGHT WATCH, two things which pushed me away more than it reeled me in. Thankfully, those nuances are not all that is on hand, making me wonder how helpful that back-of-the-box copy was.

STORM begins with a battle between two women and some barely human adversaries that are after a mysterious cube the women possess. The cube, whatever it is, is valuable enough to kill for, a truth the women discover personally all too quickly. One is able to escape her pursuers though and in escaping, finds a man to pass the cube on to, along with the clue that if he can go back, he can open the cube and find the truth. The man, a callous, self absorbed ass who writes for a living and who is beyond perplexed upon receiving the strange box. The man has little time to consider the strangeness of the woman and the situation though as her pursuers are immediately on his trail and after him and it’s only luck that keeps him ahead of them. What he finds is that perhaps he has no choice but to do as the woman says and must go to the beginning to find the answer, but where, exactly, is that? With the aid of a well timed smack to the head, he discovers that the beginning is his own youth, a time he has blocked off out of his waking mind, and a time when he perhaps set the tone for his adult life. And the memories come back to him of monstrous things he had done, awful acts he had committed, and the great sins that have always haunted him. There are clues within these dream-memories suggesting that what he is going through is in actuality a game entitled The Storm but, if it is a game, how can it feel so real. As his own past comes back to him he sees that the box, the cube, is power, and that power is wanted by two sides, two factions. The mystery woman seems to be all that remains of her faction, and a strange man who controls the hunters represents the other and now it has come to the man, a flawed, fragile man who has never had to make any sort of real choice, to choose who shall control this power, and what comes next.

This is one of those weird movies that, even after you’ve seen it you still don’t quite understand what you’ve seen. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. I know there are plenty of films I have seen (MEMENTO again most recently) that, upon further viewings, you find more paths into the narrative and truly find the treasures buried within the movie. With STORM I can’t say that. I can’t say that on further viewings I’d know any more than I do now, that I’d better understand what had happened, or that I’d get more from it. And all of this sounds awful, but the thing is, the movie still works, generally. It’s a well made film and, during the middle, when the lead is discovering his past, is pretty great. I think the greatest disappointment I felt was that the film didn’t delve more deeply into that material. The imagery is good here, the direction is fair, and overall, it’s not a bad film, I just wish there were more. There are so many questions brought up that are left hanging and it just feels as if there’s an expectation that there will be more films, or that this is part of the mystery of the film. Either way, it left me more frustrated than anything else.

I can see why you’d align this with, say, THE MATRIX, because of the imagery present in STORM but, honestly, this is a film that, though it echoes other films, deserves to be seen and judged on its own. It has flaws, yes, but there are some beautiful, true moments here that really make it hard to tell people not to see it. Even though it doesn’t always work, this is an enjoyable film that deserves a better fate than to simply gather dust on a back shelf foreign section of a video store.

…c…




6 out of 10 Jackasses
blog comments powered by Disqus