Storm War (2011)

Storm War (2011) DVD I watched titled "Weather Wars" 1st watched 8/3/2014 – 7 out of 10(Dir-Todor Chapkanov): Exciting and well-written movie about a scientist who's funding is cutoff by the government on a project where the intent was to use weather as an asset channeling it into a weapon for the country. The senator who dropped the funding becomes a target to the elderly scientist years later as he's perfected his research and is using it as revenge. The main evil character is played by Stacy Keach – his two sons and a former assistant try to help the government track him down before he kills a lot of people. Keach's character poses initially as a bum to plant a tracking device on the Senator and then let's lose the energy sources that create the weather anomalies. Keach does a great job in this role and the rest of the cast carry the load well despite the somewhat inconceivable plot. The director, Todor Chapkanov, keeps the story moving with the only flaw being an attempt at throwing in some romance, which in my opinion, was un-necessary. Otherwise the story flows well and keeps your interest to the very end. The Senator's character is sometimes too hardlined and formulaic as far as being the no-holds barred rough guy, but the other characters are believable. The sons are two totally different personalities – one following in his father's footsteps and the other going the other direction – which makes for an interesting collaboration. As the father continues bringing down his haters the group work well together to try and bring him down and stop the ultimate destruction of the city of Washington D.C. This, in my opinion, was an un-expected gem where this genre is usually too over-the-top for anyone to pay attention --- but they make the possibility seem believable making the movie work.

I was bought Weather Wars (aka Storm Wars) as a joke gift DVD. In the UK, the DVD cover shows a flooded Capitol Hill with with the Supreme Court building being "attacked" by a twister. Odd, because there's no flood in the movie.The discrepancy becomes bigger when you read the description on the back of the DVD box: "A young scientist revels in the creation of a supercomputer that can stop the effects of climate change and catastrophic weather. When the computer's artificial intelligence advances it creates deadly storms to stop the military from controlling it or shutting it down. It's up to the scientist to outsmart his own creation..." Sounds great, huh? Kind of Day After Tomorrow meets Terminator. Only that description bears no relevance to the plot of the movie. In the film, the young scientist is chasing down his own deranged father, who has somehow learnt to control the weather and is wreaking revenge on the US Government. No super-computer with advanced AI is ever mentioned.In saying that, what they've produced is actually okay. The plot's a bit silly but the performances and SFX are reasonably for what's obviously a low-budget movie.**SPOILER** The end leaves the door open for a sequel. That probably shouldn't happen.

Okay, Storm War( aka Weather Wars) is not a good film, but I didn't think it was a terrible film either, better if not by much than the usual standards of SyFy movies. I did think the special effects and acting are a little above average, especially compared to the shoddy effects and non-existent acting plaguing other Syfy movies, and the photography was decent. However there a lot wrong with it, and it is a lot of the usual problems, cheesy dialogue, editing that can be all over the map, stereotypical and bland characters, a structurally thin and implausible(especially the main idea) story and a predictable ending. In conclusion, not terrible, not good, if anything I got a very lukewarm experience out of it. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Given the title of the movie, and the list of cast, you know what kind of movie you are in for already from the start. The title itself was an indicator of this going to be bad.The story was really thin and it was so far out there that it was just so very hard to buy into it. I mean, a scientist taking revenge by using storms and lightning because his project funding was taken away. Come on, it was just not plausible.One thing that the movie had working for it, was the semi-adequate effects. The special effects weren't all that shabby, nor were they top notch state of the art. They did, however, serve their purpose well enough and it showed what needed to be shown.The cast in the movie were not on the heavy-weight scale of acting, but there were some decent enough performances here. Just don't expect any award-winning performances.I had a hard time getting into this movie, and "Weather Wars" is just another drop in the ocean of low-budget disaster movies. There are so many similar movies out there, equally stupid and thin-storied, and it didn't extinguish itself in any particular way. There are far better disaster-themed movies out there. "Weather Wars" might be worth a watch if you are a fan of anyone on the cast list, but otherwise it is a stale lukewarm experience.Having seen the movie, I can honestly say that it is not a movie that will make it to my screen a second time.