Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

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.

secondtake Storm (2009)It is hard for people outside of the United Nations crimes courts to know quite how that world feels from the inside. I think it's too foreign, in every way, to know. And Hollywood tends to approach this kind of situation with heightened drama, exaggerated flair, darker darks and more romantic romances. I'm not a U.N. insider, but this isn't Hollywood and "Storm" feels as close to getting to the reality of that world as you can get in a fictional milieu. That's the brilliance of the filmmakers, withholding and avoiding undue drama but also making the characters complex and interesting.Of course, restraint isn't always the way to engross your audience, and "Storm" tends to be interesting all along. It feels important and principled, a lot like its characters. This might help it last as a classic of some sort, gaining over time some of the shine it doesn't quite have now. But there is also the issue of why, exactly, the victims of war atrocities in the Bosnian conflict were forgotten by most of the world in the years after the war ended. From an American point of view, Yugoslavia had always seemed far away, not quite Europe, not quite Asia, becoming a mix of newly minted countries from the dissolution of a big one that had always remained isolated internationally. But the Europeans understand one of their own, and if this movie is right, it seems that Bosnia (and Serbia et al) were largely forgotten once the actual war was over. "Storm" is a particularly European approach to the issue, a Danish film overall, but a multi-culti multi-country production that fits its subject perfectly.This movie is about a kind of dogged heroism that is part of the glory, really (no joke) of the United Nations. You come to appreciate the struggling, idealist foreign service and civil rights work that goes on at the lower levels of the U.N. completely out of sight, but critically important. Here the fight is led by a discouraged mid-career lawyer played by Kerry Fox with something approaching perfection. Her character is so everyday (for a high powered lawyer), you sometimes forget that the actress is pulling it off so well. The second lead comes in only halfway through, the equally brilliant Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca, who is a victim being coaxed into testifying, even though it is putting her life and her family in mortal danger.Not many movies get made about this world in part because it's a little dry. There are no shootouts or bombs, just suspicious glares, sudden backroom decisions. But it's an important movie, at least it was for me, giving me just a small insight into that world, and into the social wreckage of the Bosnian war. If it had been given more drama, it would have acquired more hype, and director Hans-Christian Schmid deserves a bow for his steadfastness.In researching a little, I found this review which I thought was really well written, you might also enjoy: http://www.filmcritic.com/reviews/2009/storm/Or just see the darned movie.

thisissubtitledmovies The inner workings of the European Union appear centre stage as Hans- Christian Schmid (director and co-writer) shines his critical spotlight upon an ostensibly expanding crevice of stark reality wedged between true justice and political expediency.The dialogue is well structured, while the script, which is occasionally laboured, gains credence by dealing with topical issues with an obvious knowledgeable insight. Yet, ironically, this is also the movies Achilles heel. Events and procedures are so close to the inner workings of a legal system governed by technicalities that Schmid occasionally abandons entertainment for frustrating boring reality. Points against the European Union are often well made, but, at times, lack balance, and his criticism is unconstructive in nature, yet he does soften slightly as the film approaches the credits, and so, in so doing, leaves his audience with the slimmest slither of hope.Storm is a dark, thought provoking drama that, having the courage of its convictions, aims high only to fall short at the final hurdle. MG

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.