Preview: SyFy’s Storm War
Storm War stars Stacey Keach as Marcus Grange, so how bad could it be, oh wait, it’s Stacey Keach. Actually I like Stacey Keach, he’s one of those actors that is always very good, but mostly seems to get cast in movies that aren’t so good. Storm War also stars Jason London as Police Officer David Grange, Wes Brown as Jacob Grange, and Erin Cahill as Samantha Winter. David and Jacob are Marcus Grange’s sons, and Samantha was Marcus’ research assistant.
Storm War is SyFy’s Latest weather catastrophe movie, only this time it’s not natural, scientist Marcus Grange was developed a way to use the weather as a weapon. You see he was working on this tech for the US Government, but his funding was cut. Marcus took this personally and somehow managed to fund his own research in secret. After perfecting his technology Marcus is now out for revenge on all those who cancelled his funding, plus a few hundred thousand extra people as collateral damage. You see sending a Giant Killer Storm after your enemies isn’t exactly a surgical strike.
Keach’s performance as Marcus is excellent, flipping from crazy, to maniacal, to deathly serious on a dime, unfortunately the movie around him is just ho hum. It’s not that I didn’t like Storm War, it was just kind of there.
Little things stood out more than anything else, it’s easy for me to let big pseudo science things slip as a part of the “Suspension of Disbeliefâ€Â.
- One scene at the beginning has Police Officer Grange arresting a guy steeling iPods/Phones (not Sure which), but he tells the guy he would have gone for the 10GB model. 10GB? I have never seen a 10GB iPod/Phone/tablet/PDA in my life. Sorry Techno Geek at heart.
- The first big weather event is red rain, and the news reports say this is a “Never before heard of occurrenceâ€Â. Really, so not only is this a world with 10GB iPods, but they have never heard of the 10 plagues of Egypt in the Bible?
- Lightning strikes so big that the entire Pentagon shakes like there is an earthquake.
- I’ve gotta say I did rather enjoy the effect they used for the Ball lightning scene.
- Police Officer Grange can’t drive in a straight line to save his life, he’s all over the road, and they aren’t even being chased by anyone. No wonder for the rest of the movie they don’t let him drive.
What does every semi-good movie need? That’s right a montage, and not just any montage, a research montage, that keeps going back to a laptop PC that no one is using spinning on a table??? Poltergeist Weather Researchers!!! There is an idea for your next movie Syfy.
And last but not least, it’s sort of tradition at this point in disaster movies of any kind that you have to have a news crew. This usually consists of one reporter, one camera person, and a transmitter van. Storm War is no exception, the only difference here is, they news crew don’t do anything in this movie. They cut back to them for tiny segments of them not doing anything. They also happen to be the dumbest news crew I have ever seen. At one point they are trapped in the middle of this giant Ice/Lightning storm. So naturally they decide since they can’t get out they’ll put the transmitter up on their van and send in their report of the situation. The last thing I would do if stuck in the middle of a killer lightning storm would be to deploy a 30 ft tall lightning rod on the vehicle that I am sitting in.
All said and done, it’s not that Storm War was a bad movie, it just wasn’t a good movie. It did give me something to do on my train ride to work though.
Follow Us on Twitter @SciFiFX
Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/scififx
