Customer Reviews

Storm

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First and foremost, "Storm" is a crackling political thriller set in contemporary Europe. No, you won't find big-budget Hollywood special effects here. But this is a tale worthy of Hitchcock in which an innocent survivor of Serbian ethnic cleansing finds her entire family suddenly in danger wherever they turn.

When I popped the preview disc into my DVD player, I didn't move for 103 minutes. The storyline and direction is that well crafted. In the crime-drama genre, this is a "procedural"--showing us the risks and heartbreaking choices that arise in the day-to-day completion of a major human-rights case. At times, you might be reminded of "Law and Order" on a global scale.

But there's so much more in this film! That's why I'm strongly recommending "Storm." It's not only thrilling to watch and enlightening as a glimpse into European political intrigue. The film also is a powerful story about the overall cost of such investigations in the lives of survivors. Unfortunately, there are millions of survivors of crimes against humanity all around the world. Sometimes, as Americans, it's easy to say: Why don't they all come forward?

"Storm" answers that question. Yes, this is fiction. Survivor Mira Arendt's case is not a real case. But her story is truthful on a deep level. In this review, I don't want to spoil the twists and turns of the hair-raising plot, but I can say this: Mira passionately hopes that the Serbian architect of these crimes will be punished at the Hague. When events in the case take a shocking, tragic turn--and seem to be heading in the criminal's favor--Mira finally decides to come forward and reveal her own evidence.

At that point, Mira's life transforms from her quiet, happy existence with her husband and young son--flashing her back into the months of torture and murder she survived. Suddenly, the world's political factions also come crashing in around her.

That's the main reason I so strongly recommend this film: Global injustice is close to the heart of men and women with active spiritual lives. We want to help heal the world. We want to stick up for victims. "Storm" shows us eloquently that there's often a huge cost when we lift up the downtrodden. Our responsibility extends far beyond merely encouraging these men and women to stand up for themselves. We need to be standing with them for many years afterward.

<strong>Storm</strong> (Hans-Christian Schmid, 2009)

Hans-Christian Schmid has been directing films since the late eighties, but he got his first big buzz in America in 2006 with <em>Requiem</em> (which is basically the other half of the story of Anneliese Michel, which also came to screen in 2005 in <em>The Exorcism of Emily Rose</em>). For those of us seeing his work for the first time, Schmid provided ample evidence that he is capable of producing powerful, slow-moving drama about either demonic possession or a young woman slowly going insane, your call. (That the ambiguity still exists at the end of the film is one of its strongest points.) His follow-up was <em>Storm</em>, and it couldn't be any more different from <em>Requiem</em> if it tried: a tense courtroom drama dealing with ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia during the civil war that split the country into modern-day Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, et al. If you want to show your versatility as a director, these would be two excellent films to do so in the shortest possible amount of time. And while <em>Storm</em> is no <em>Requiem</em>, it's a solid courtroom thriller that echoes the Nazi courtroom dramas of the fifties while staying entirely grounded in modern times.

Plot: Hannah (<em>Bright Star</em>'s Kerry Fox) is a war crimes tribunal prosecutor charged with bringing Croatian general Goran Duric (<em>Madonna</em>'s Drazen Kuhn) to justice for wartime atrocities during Operation Storm (Duric is based on real-life Storm commander Ante Gotovina, a truly nasty character; you can check out a bio on wikipedia. Short answer, at the end of the real-life trial, he went to prison for twenty-four years). Unfortunately, it turns out her main witness to some of Duric's atrocities has perjured himself on the stand, and after Hannah presses him on it, he commits suicide. Without his testimony, Duric goes free, so Hannah must travel to Yugoslavia to find anyone else who might have been an eyewitness. Even more unfortunately, in the areas where Hannah must go, Duric is still considered a war hero, and those trying to convict him are considered enemies by the public. Still, Hannah manages to find a possible witness in Mira Arendt (<em>4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days</em>' Anamaria Marinca), the deceased witness' sister, along with the stunning revelation that he lied on the stand because he wasn't an eyewitness to the crimes--his sister was one of the victims.

While it plays out like a courtroom thriller, it should be noted that Schmid, who is always willing to give stories the time they need to develop, is just as interested in the blossoming of the relationship between Hannah and Mira as he is in the courtroom drama. (In fact, Hannah's long-term relationship with another lawyer, which should have been a subplot, is instead given the shortest shrift possible--which makes one piece of the climax feel far more anticlimactic than it should, the movie's greatest failing.) This has led more than a few Internet wags, and some professional critics, to say the movie is boring and move on. No, this isn't an episode of Law and Order. This is a movie with real characters we get to know, and to like, and with a plot that, despite being based (rather closely, from what I can tell in my reading up on it) on real life, beggars belief. It's a very powerful film that could have been even more so with perhaps one more script revision. Well worth your time. *** ½

****1/2

"Storm" is a superb drama about the continuing search for justice for crimes committed in the 1990s during the war in Bosnia.

The brilliant Kerry Fox stars as Hannah Maynard, a prosecutor working at the Haige, who is mounting a case against a Yugoslavian army commander, Goran Duric (Drazen Kuhn), who may have played a part in Serbian ethnic cleansing. The equally affecting Anamaria Marinca plays Mira, a young woman who was repeatedly raped under Duric's orders, but who has since moved to Germany to try and forget the past and to start a new life with her husband and young son. Yet, under Hannah's insistence, Mira is eventually convinced to do the right thing - i.e. to come forward as a witness against Duric - at great personal risk to herself and her family.

The screenplay by Bernd Lange and director Hans-Christian Schmid is multi-layered and complex, with each character emerging as a fully fleshed-out human being. Hannah is largely motivated by a righteous zeal and a desire to see true justice achieved through the court of law. Yet, there are moments when her motives are brought into question, when even the man she is dating accuses her of using the case more as a stepping-stone in her career than as a means of achieving a noble ideal. Similarly, Mira is torn between the desire to see that justice is finally done and the understandable need to secure a safe and peaceful life for her and her family. But there are more than issues of mere justice involved here, for by suppressing the horrors of what happened to her in the past, Mira has, in many ways, prevented herself from moving on with her life, a condition she may be able to rectify if she agrees to testify against Duric.

Beyond the character dilemmas, there is the broader issue of whether justice can ever be truly achieved in cases such as these, especially given the delicate political nature of such trials. Too often, for instance, the EU finds itself not wanting to "rock the boat" with present and future member nations and, thus, turns a blind eye to many of the obvious atrocities that have occurred in those places in the recent past.

Rife with human drama and enflamed by a righteous passion, "Storm" is an engrossing and vital recounting of recent tragic history.

"Storm" (104 min.) is another release in the excellent on-going Film Movement DVD series. The movie, directed by German Hans-Christian Schmid, centers around the attempt of a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, to convict a Yugoslav general of certain war crimes committed during the Balkan War in the 1990s. When a key witness commits suicide, the prosecutor needs to rebuid the case and ultimately turns to the sister of the key witness. From there things grow more and more tense.

This movie felt very "European" from start to finish. The locales used in the movie (Sarajevo, Berlin, THe Hague, among others) certainly contribute to that. But it's also in the style of filming, which is very different from your standard Hollywood feature. The acting in this movie is fantastic, none more so than Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca (who also starred in "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days") as the sister, and of course also Kerry Fox as the prosecutor. Overall, this is a solid but sobering look at the long-term consequences of the Balkan War on just one family. Not something to see when you need cheering up, but an excellent under-the-radar indie movie in my book.

(special thanks to Film Movement for providing me with a screener!)

War crimes tribunals can be a tricky thing. It can be hard to define what a war crime is, hard to get evidence and hard to get testimony. Sometimes eyewitnesses are all you've got, and eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.

This is what Hannah, a war crimes prosecutor handling a case against a Serbian war criminal, discovers very quickly into her case as her star witness lies on the witness stand and then kills himself. Needless to say this buggers the case but good and leaves her completely at a loss as to how to proceed. Then she meets the witness' sister and begins to see a way to make the case after all...

The plot to this movie is quite good as are the performances (and most of the film is in English, for those of you who shy away from subtitles), but there was something about it that left me rather bored. I didn't dislike it at all, but it just seemed somewhat off. The ending was certainly somewhat unsatisfying, but real-life court cases frequently are. Maybe it's just that I don't know enough about the genocides in the Balkans to really get sucked into it?

Whatever it was, it made this movie less-than-compelling to me. I didn't dislike it, but I just couldn't get into it.

=== Short Subject ===

This month's short subject, "Toyland", is a real tear-jerker. It centers around a woman who lives in Germany during WWII and explains to her son that the Jewish neighbors are being sent away soon. She doesn't want to expose the boy to reality, so she says they're going to Toyland. The boy is fascinated by this and decides he wants to go. The mother dismisses this, but imagine her surprise and panic when she finds the boy is missing and the neighbors are already on the trains.

This movie, despite it's short length, was much more compelling to me than the main feature. The performances were all excellent, and the final shot was wonderfully poignant. This film alone is worth picking up the DVD for!