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Movie Reviews
Storm
By Hervé St.Louis
July 15, 2006 - 09:07

Storm
Director: Mans Marlind, Bjorn Stein
Screenplay: Mans Marlind
Cast: Eric Ericson, Eva Rose, Jonas Karlsson, Lina Englund, Sasha Becker
Producers: Karl Fredrik Ulfung
Distributor: Swedish Film Institute
Sweden
2005 | 111 min
Swedish language, English subtitles

Storm is the story of DD, a writer whose skin can’t feel a thing. This ailment crosses over to all aspects of his life, as doesn’t care much about anything or anyone. Playing the smart ass and making odd comments about people he meets, he stumbles, apparently not by accident on a fight between a red-hair woman trying to escape from a bunch of leather-clad killers who want to burn her and their slick looking man in black type boss. Can DD make it out alive before the night ends, as he is given the task of protecting a box he can’t open? Storm premiered in North America at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 14, 2006, in Montreal and has received the audience award at the Stockholm Film Festival in 2005.

Look inside your inner self madness

It’s always good to see that other people besides North Americans can make action thrillers with grandiose cinematography, effects and compelling plot. Were this film in English, it would be one hell of a blockbuster. Instead, it’s stuck on the Film Festival circuit, although its production budget and quality make it a good contender against anything from Hollywood.

In fact, this film is inspired by all the comic book movies of late and related flicks like the Matrix. A lot of people wear leather and do kung fu in this film. However, as great as this film was, it is still European. That means that it starts as a good thriller action film then it becomes a pseudo intellectual look into your inner self art fest with blurry environments and second degrees’ guesses and hints with holier than thou messages. Then, it goes back to being an action film but soon, it becomes one of those films where reality doesn’t even matter.

I guess the Swedes just could not help themselves and had to insert some profound intellectual BLA BLA BLA in order to feel good about themselves. I didn’t even bother trying to look for meaning after a while as there are no hints of a hidden message. When the payoff comes and the big secret of the box is revealed, it seems like it was forced and pushed in at the last meaning. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the film, although the nice moody effects try to make it so.

More people screaming for no reason

Next, there is the comic book universe which seems to influence a whole lot of films these days. It seems that putting a couple of panels from a comic book on screen ads relevancy to a project. It’s like adding some quotes from Picasso or Einstein. It’s great that comic books are being recognized as a source for the ultimate meaning of life, but all these directors forget that the strengths of comics are not the weird vigilantes jumping on roofs, but the sequential nature of the art form. I know I’m not making sense here, but neither did the film . . . The fog effect was cool though.