Storm

2009
6.9| 1h43m| NA| en| More Info
Released: 30 October 2009 Released
Producted By: Deblokada
Country: Sweden
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

Hannah Maynard, a prosecutor of Hague's Tribunal for war crimes in former Yugoslavia, charges a Serbian commander for killing Bosniaks. However, her main witness might be lying, so the court sends a team to Bosnia to investigate.

Genre

Drama

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Storm (2009) is currently not available on any services.

Director

Hans-Christian Schmid

Production Companies

Deblokada

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Storm Audience Reviews

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.
Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.
SnoopyStyle Hannah Maynard (Kerry Fox) is a prosecutor at Hague's Tribunal for war crimes. She's given the trial against a Serbian commander 3 years after his arrest. The prosecution goes into a tail spin when the main witness's testimony is found to be factually wrong. She's under pressure and has to restart the investigation. She finds the witness's sister Mira Arendt (Anamaria Marinca) to be the real witness. Everybody is under threat. Mira had tried to start a new life in Germany. Entrenched powers, political expediency and brutal thuggery threatens to derail the truth.Parts of this movie have great intensity but other parts get dragged down by the mechanics of the investigation and minutia of the trial. Kerry Fox is solidly in the lead while Anamaria Marinca provides the power. Other movies of its kind would provide constant flashbacks to inject the horror of war. This is a smaller undertaking but I think that the climax would be better served with a more powerful flashback reveal.
Roland E. Zwick "Storm" is a superb drama about the continuing search for justice for crimes committed more than a decade ago 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.
samkan STORM works best as a legal thriller (I'm a criminal lawyer). Its depictions of witnesses, evidentiary rules, discussions with opposing counsel, etc., are done very well. STORM's acting, dialog, shooting and direction are done professionally and convincingly; e.g., the film never drags and, until the end, there's nothing that drags or takes one "out of the film". The intertwining of the political influences is also done well. It should be made clear that while the Balkans tragedy serves as the vehicle for STORM, this is not a movie about those horrors in particular; i.e., the same film may have made using a different conflict.Having said so much, STORM lacks passion. Its as if a talented group of people were tasked with making the movie, put in many hard days, then went back to pursuing what they truly loved. The lack of passion may result from STORM's lack of evil clearly depicted villains; i.e., stuff which arouses viewers. Indeed, hardly any background or time is given the Defendant in the docket for the entire film. The horrific scenes of the crimes involved are not seen but provided via the courtroom testimony. I understand that such may be precisely what the makers of STORM wanted to do; i.e., not be explicit to highlight the routine and tedium of legal work. If so, they succeeded. Maybe too well.
artu_ue This film was supposed to be done in 2007 and to talk about a Croatian war crime criminal Ante Gotovina that was arrested in Spain and the infamous 'Storm' (military offensive in Croatia in 1995), but somehow the title stayed, but the story changed (probably doing the long research) and it's about a trial against a Serbian commander from the same war (who gets caught in Spain at the beginning of the film though) and the main roles (the convict and his lawyer) were played by Croatians which was funny. The commander's name and the place where he allegedly committed crimes are fiction, except the hotel's name that was modified, but who can speak the language will get it.Anyway, doesn't matter which side is being the bad one, a war criminal is a war criminal but also a national hero for some. What I like about this film is that it's remarkably restrained for a political film, there are no flashbacks to the wars in the Balkans because in the first place it covers the dynamics of the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) in pretty much critical way, how it works (shown from personal and public perspective), how time pressure on witnesses, judges, prosecutors.. should be reduced because the UN plans closing the Tribunal by the end of 2010 and many things have been left untold, unsolved, criminals unpunished.. It yearns for public awareness hoping something will change. It portrays how difficult it is to run a lawsuit when you can't make witnesses testify because they are afraid for their lives and families, when even after so many years some people are not ready to speak, the others are not capable of accepting the terrible crimes violating human rights as crimes that should be punished. It shows women's zeal for justice and punishment more than men's, people trying to maintain their balance when everything's unjust, betrayals, political countermeasures.. In this film a hero may not get the villain, the victim may not get to testify like she wants and the justice may not be satisfied because even at high court as this one justice is just a part of political games, a lot of compromises are being made because a lot of things are at stake (for example the witness' testimony may jeopardize the political need to bring various states from ex-Yugoslavia into the EU, it should be done as smoothly as possible and everything else is less important, even justice).The heart of the film lies in the scene when a witness finds out that she won't be allowed to testify about her ordeal she asks a question about the ICTY in the fury - What kind of court is this? What the hell is it actually for?! The frustrating answer which is hard to accept is - Partial justice is better than none. And I should add superb acting by leading female roles Kerry Fox and Anamaria Marinca, the Notwist's music in the background giving the special cold feeling to the whole murky atmosphere and making the film good as it is, but still it has more sense to people from the region or those involved with the Tribunal.