Superstorm (2007) Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

UK 2007
Director: Julian Simpson
Cast: Nicola Stephenson, Tom Sizemore, Cas Anvar, JR Bourne, Chris Potter, Jana Carpenter, Maxim Roy
Rating: -
Release Date: April 15, 22, 29 2007; April 24th 2009 (VCD, Indonesia)
Running Time: 2 hours 32 minutes

The Movie Review

Superstorm film still 1


SUPERSTORM
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

You just can't say no to cheap prices... :-) Okay, sometimes you can, but could you say no to heavily discounted film? I don't know 'bout you, but I got lured pretty easily by the insanely cheap price of this movie. On that afternoon, having been full with yummy lunch, I went to a book store to check out some magazines or catalogues about FIFA World Cup 2010 when I suddenly noticed something very alluring. A tag of price that said "5,000 Rupiahs" for an original VCD?! That had been cut from its initial price of 49,000 Rupiahs? Okay, wrap it up for me please... That's just about half a US Dollar from the initial price of about 5 dollars!

And what made me even more excited was to know the fact that it's a disaster film! So, it looks pretty good right? What's the catch? Oh... there is a catch. It's freakin' tedious! But let us just see what's this movie about...

The story basically revolves around a group of genius scientists that are struggling to control the weather for the sake of human being's life. Their efforts are becoming even more important when an imminent danger of hurricane is threatening the life of many people in some parts of the U.S. But apparently these scientists are having low quotient in making a healthy friendship among themselves. Mainly because of the presence of the genius young mathematician, Lance Resnick (J.R. Bourne), who has created a cutting edge machine to predict the behavior of Storm. The skeptical Resnick is blatantly critical and even sarcastic about Sara Hughes's theory in controlling the storm through means of Seeding the cloud. Resnick thinks that Sara is carried away by her own imagination of rehabilitating her grandfather's failure attempt at controlling weather several decades back.

Argument after argument ensues among them and it is not helping that the leader, Dan (Chris Potter), was having an affair with Sara (Nicola Stephenson), thus renders him a lot less charismatic to actually lead the team, and it is worsened by the fund-seeker, Katzenberg (Tom Sizemore of Paparazzi (2004) & Born on the 4th of July (1989)), of the team who seemingly has his a different agenda of his own. But all personal afflictions aside, there are people's life to be saved here, and could this scientists eventually be able to alter the path of the Storm thus making them weather controller?

Disaster films are always a big OK in my book, but I definitely don't see anything shining or memorable from this BBC Worldwide's movie. Superstorm is actually a made for TV movie that was broken down to three episodes which respectively aired on 15th, 22nd, and 29th April of 2007. Superstorm, essentially, is not a total disaster film since it's actually falls to the category of Docudrama. A hybrid of genres that combined seriously logical scientific stuff with some dramatization of the characters' conflicts and personal stories.

Then all I can say is that the acting, it's decent. But the story or the drama sucks hard. Especially for avid disaster fans among you fellow moviegoers, the story is just pretentious, and the annoying level of this Lance Resnick character is just too high, from being a simple antagonist to almost unbearable. It's not J.R. Bourne's fault, it's the script I guess. Other characters are hard to believe as well, the laid-back Mr. Cool Ralf DeWitt (Nicolas Wright), and the female technician, Holly (Jana Carpenter), that's constantly trying to convey "I'm a geek but I'm hot and cool too by the way". And... now the ending, though dramatic, but it's just making this movie even more annoying. A type of cliffhanger ending like this should've been preceded first with serious storyline. And about the scientific facts being presented, well I guess scientists out there would know better about it. So I think it would not be a serious matter for general viewers. What's the matter is how the filmmakers were using over-stylized camerawork and kinda out-of-the-place sound effects.

So, I guess the catch of the cheap price tag was that the fact that it probably hadn't been sold for some time. And even though I don't regret having spent 5,000 Rupiahs on this VCD, I suggest for you to seek another title if you want to enjoy a Storm Disaster Film.

> Snatch this great docudrama about Storm Katrina, Trouble the Water (2006), and do whatever you can to get a grab on this insanely memorable docudrama, Touching the Void (2003).