Storm

I took a chance on this oddity, because I kind of enjoyed another minor-budget film by the same director/writer David Winning. Or maybe it was the presence of Michael Ironside in that film? Anyway, the Cannon produced Canadian endurance thriller "STORM" plays its cards in a typical fashion. Well, up to a point. Thanks to some rather offbeat and uncanny sequences.

After the nicely shot, laconically dark opening scene. It gets a little slow and stretched out by settling on featherbrain comedy of its two leads (namely David Palfy's meekly nerdish character) turning their campus into a battleground with their assassination game played with dart guns. Along with jarring dream sequences. This goes on for nearly a good hour, before they decide to take this sense of gung-ho survival to the wilderness. Then these two camping buddies come across three crooks returning after nearly four decades to retrieve their stolen loot. And the two soon realize survival out there, is not just going to be some game.

You might scoff at some dweeb character taking on crooks in the backwoods, but these men are probably in their late 50s/ early 60s and not particularly healthy. So I can believe it. Even then, it can drag at times with its contrived survival mode, but it's more so psychological based rather than exploitatively action-fuelled. Winning's compact handling stays minimal with a script that seems to spend more time developing the psyches of the characters. Those moments do come into play when it becomes a life-or-death conflict, but I really dug its sense of irony with the final shot. Winning's short film "SEQUENCE" was the prototype for this feature length film.

What I anticipated was a Hollywood-like action/adventure I would sit through to waste some time on a hot summer day. Instead, I was mesmerized by a delightfully innovative, low- budget movie, that keeps you guessing where you'll be taken next. Palfy is a wonder to watch. With the amazing energy he brings to this movie it's no wonder he went from a dead body in FULL METAL JACKET to a real career after STORM. Don't let the production description fool you, this movie is not at all as simple as the promotional description would let you believe. David Winning did a terrific job on the script, the direction and editing. Beginning filmmakers should hope their movie efforts are as good as this.

Good golly miss molly where did the storm go? I was watching this film, waiting with anticipation for the "Storm" to hit, when all I got was a mild drizzle which left me wet and miserable. To watch the acting is to watch something out of a bad "B" movie. Wait, this is a bad "B" movie. To bad the director's name, which by the way is Winning, didn't shine it's magic on this poorly crafted poorly directed mess. And the story! What a tired run of the mill attempt at suspense. One laughable line that keeps sticking in my mind as one of the characters is dying is, "It's not a game Booker". A line said out of fear and desperation and my reply is, "It's not a good movie Booker". If a movie has the audacity to use the name "Storm", then it better prove worthy of such a title. This "Storm" simply spit up a little suspense and not much else. Perhaps the title should have been "Lightly Scattered Showers".