Storm Catcher

Rating

Director

Tony Hickox

Screenplay

Bill Gucwa, Ed Masterson

Length

1h 35m

Starring

Dolph Lundgren, Mystro Clark, John Pennell, Robert Miano, Yvonne Zima, Kyle Bax, Jody Jones, Robert Glen Keith, Tony Hickox, Kimberley Davies

MPAA Rating

R

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
It seems that there is an unwritten rule in Hollywood that muscle-bound foreign actors must make horrendous action films featuring high-tech machinery and colossal explosions. In Storm Catcher, Dolph Lundgren fills this mold to imperfection.

Lundgren stars as Major Jack Holloway, a military pilot whose life takes a turn for the worse when the theft of an ultra-secret plane is pinned on him. Storm Catcher is the name of the plane, a stealth bomber that only two people are trained to fly. One is Holloway and the other is his friend Captain Lucas (John Pennell). Mystro Clark plays Captain Sparks, Holloway’s longtime friend and godfather to his daughter Nicole (Yvonne Zima).

Add into the mix a trophy wife, Jessica (Kylie Bax), a demanding commanding officer, General Jacobs (Robert Miano) and two CIA agents who clearly stumbled onto the set when they were on their way to or from filming of television’s The X-Files.

Agents Lock (Kimberley Davies) and Load (the film’s director Anthony Hickox) are small and useless characters that provide information we could have figured out on our own, plus bits of pointless exposition. Bax’s performance is as shallow as she is thin, Miano is gruff and transparent, Pennell is fake and uninteresting and Clark seems like he wants to emulate Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire.

Compared to all the others, Lundgren is acceptable. His grasp of the English language and acting are only slightly better concealed than action counterpart Arnold Schwarzeneggar. When performing daring feats of physical ability, he partially makes up for his inability to portray emotion in scenes with his wife and daughter.

The only breath of fresh air among this weak ensemble is young Yvonne Zima whose previous work includes acting on the hit television series ER. Despite her youth, she shows more maturity in her performance here than any one of her counterparts.

The professional quality of this feature is obvious until the bloated action sequences begin. Peppered with slow motion and drenched in jerky, hand-held camera shots, these scenes took me back to the first project in my film editing class. Halfway into the first annoying sequence, I wanted them to stop the camera so I could get off this wickedly inept ride.

It doesn’t take much to ruin a film. In an action film, the fight scenes and explosions must be perfect to elicit the appropriate reaction from the audience. However, with obviously unskilled talent behind the camera, Storm Catcher is little more than a farce on celluloid.

The title refers to the stealth bomber, but might also refer to an approaching tempest in a teapot and the man who would bring the storm under control. On the other hand, since the culprits behind Storm Catcher didn’t seem to put much thought into the script, perhaps they didn’t even realize the potential double meaning of its title?

Review Written

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