MOVIE REVIEW: Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead ~ FILMYWAPAS

Images courtesy of Blue Harbor Entertainment

STORM RIDER: LEGEND OF HAMMERHEAD— 3 STARS

The three-man story team of the international actioner Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead—directors Domagoj Mazuran, Zoran Lisinac, and producer Neb Chupin—have taken the challenge of making lore from scratch. To do so, solely in the genre of cinema, where you are not borrowing from and bolstered by richer, deeper, and previously written source material, is no small task. Just ask George Lucas. Now, nothing is going to be the next Star Wars. What you don’t want to be is the next Jupiter Ascending. That said, Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead successfully finds its own ambitious niche.

LESSON #1: CREATING LORE FROM SCRATCH— Measured ambition is the key for Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead in creating mythology within its own limits. You want something new, with far-flung characters and settings, yet it is very easy to try too much when a foundation of simple themes—good versus evil, love, and survival—works every time. As a creative retort, Mazuran, Lisinac, and Chupin decided to create their own subgenre: “Calamari Sci-Fi.” If you hear that invented term, think of “spaghetti westerns,” and tilt your head with a wry chuckle as you prepare to get your Mediterranean on, you’re not alone, but hear them out.

This film posits a post-apocalyptic future Earth where a great flood three centuries prior has reduced landmasses and populations to living on a smattering of small islands. Amid the fearful natural obstacles, the atmosphere above the vast open ocean has produced an ever-present, impenetrable electrical storm that surrounds the remnants of human civilization. In Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead, the sole dominant city-state is the fortified metropolis of Argos, whose walled confines are ruled by the immortal Founders, led by the cold Tarus (Gilles Geary of Echo Boomers) and his top lieutenant, the Baroness (the ageless Caroline Goodall of Hook and Cliffhanger).

LESSON #2: EARNING SURVIVAL— In this future under Founder rule, “to live, you must earn it.” As a measure of governmental control, admission to Argos and its resources is won through “Storm Riding.” Similar to the sporty haves and have-nots of Death Race 2000, each outlying island community sponsors modified powerboats piloted by a single operator competing in perilous races. Speed, skill, and bravery are key, as well as a means of harnessing lightning strikes as engine power-ups. Winners gain their people's inclusion, while the defeated have their island’s resources razed.

A generation earlier, a storied outlaw champion named Hammerhead dared to do what no one else imagined: breach the enveloping electric storm to explore what possibly lies beyond it. As evidenced by the film’s title, the spirit of that endeavour still creates wonder amongst the commoners and fuels two new racers named Neb (Vikings ensemble member Marco Ilsø) and Maia (The Colony’s Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) to attempt the same stunt. Guided by his grandfather Dida (Braveheart’s James Corso) and special ability to see visions of the fateful future, Neb represents his homeland of Fig Island’s last best hope for freedom.

Organizing this oceanic battleground, Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead provides a competitive energy that increases the entertaining suspense of its lofty premise. Is there a more tame way to settle regional politics? Sure, but where’s the fun and danger in that? While it’s far from the outlandish, souped-up inventions of George Miller and his far bigger budgets, the Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead prop masters, Adrijan Gabelica and Marin Jeremic, build enough rugged edges and gears to costume the seafaring horsepower. Stunt coordinator Kosta Jovic and marine coordinator Patrik Damijan guide the gliding mayhem of the on-the-water operators, dive teams, and drone rigs to capture solid kinetic action when the races are on.

To amplify scenes and settings, Storm Rider: Legend of the Hammerhead has obvious computer-generated seams, but they never dominate the screened images. By binding itself to the waves, villages, and shorelines of its chiselled Croatian and Serbian seaside filming locations, the film gives itself established boundaries and a built-in cultural look that keeps it from veering too squalid or weirdly embarrassing like Waterworld. Retaining tangible surfaces and skipping larger green screens, Mazuran and Lisinac intelligently painted around—and not completely over—the Walls of Dubrovnik, the Kalemegdan Fortress, Cove Zavratnica, and the lush topography granted by the Adriatic islands of Brac, Hvar, and Pag.

LESSON #3: RISING TO THE OCCASION— In a way, audiences can see the necessary obstacles and victories coming in Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead. At some point, as a movie, you’re going to have to do what you promise to do. They wouldn’t have so many stakeholder—high, low, near and far—wax poetically about what could lie beyond the highly charged and ominously dark thunderheads without that being the destiny of choice and the reestablishment of the famed Hammerhead mantle. The responsibility then becomes rising to the occasion, both for the filmmakers building the pace and anticipation to that proper climax (while seeking to build a franchise) and the created characters selling the appropriate blood, sweat, and tears to reach that level.

With the look and so-called rules of conflict in place, the actors do their best to extend the lore from there in Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead. Admittedly, this becomes the film’s weakest area. Mazuran and Lisinac use an excessive amount of narrated exposition, flashbacks, and even a flash-forward or two. While that style of verbal storytelling can give Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead a campfire tale feel, especially with James Corso adding his monologues to the portending, it takes away from (or, quite possibly, masks) the performance ranges for Marco Ilsø, tabbed to be the movie’s Luke Skywalker, and Gilles Geary as his heavy foil. Both pose more than move with their assigned and locked-in feelings.

All of this leads to volumes of soft-spoken talk at times in places where valiant discovery and experiences born from initiative could go further. You’ve got muscular, heavy-metal boats racing for survival through surf laced with dazzling electrical bolts dropping from the sky. That doesn’t have to be entirely serious. Swash that buckle up a bit and squeeze some more color and courage out of this spectacle.