Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

jjploquin The first thing we have the right to expect from actors is that they can speak loudly and clearly enough to be understood by everybody in the audience. I am sorry but mumbling is not good enough for a professional who makes his/her living by speaking. The subject of the movie seemed attractive enough but after half an hour of straining our ears to understand what was going on, my wife and I decided that no matter how bad we'd love to see the bad guy brought down, enough bad acting was enough. It was made worse because the movie was supposed to be subtitled and it was not. Please, miss Fox and company, call me back when you have passed your exam in elocution.

JoeKulik A very "twisty" storyline that is very well thought out and well executed. Yet, as convoluted as this tale is,it was not only easy to follow, but it "sucked me in" more and more as the film progressed. Very suspenseful. Excellent, "natural" acting by the whole cast that gives the film an air of actually being a documentary, as much as a theatrical film. The court proceedings, both the public part, as well as the "behind the scenes" maneuvering was quite accurate from my layman's point of view. The cinematography was very good as well, providing several interesting camera positions in many scenes. The only unrealistic part of the film is towards the end, when the female prosecutor begins to lose her professionalism and becomes emotionally involved with the case. That she discovers in the end that her diplomat husband was actually conspiring with the defendant for political reasons was Much TOO "coincidental" for me, as well. Overall, though I would DEFINITELY view this film again, now having benefited from seeing it the first time. ... joseph.kulik.919@gmail.com

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.

John Raymond Peterson The movie has won two awards at the Berlin International Festival, one at the Munich and the London Film Festivals and one at the Chicago International Film Festival; Amnesty International award at the Berlin International Festival was another it won at that festival, for its probing subject depiction. A glance at the brief storyline gives you an idea of the context of the story. The cast were complete unknowns to me but clearly that is because I have a poor knowledge of rising European actors (a work in progress); the actors delivered most convincing performances.This movie brings you inside the International Criminal Tribunal where you will discover the enormous challenges this organization has to overcome to fulfill its mandate, the utter frustrating obstacles the prosecutors, administrator, researchers, minders and others have to contend with on a regular basis and realize that the more passionate and dedicated prosecutors are, the more likely they are to find justice is an elusive ideal and a practically unrealistic hope they are best not to invest to much in. You will feel the same sad resignation to reality as that which the movie "The Whistleblower" mad me feel (see my review of same).The main character in this movie, Hannah Maynard, played by Kerry Fox, is undermined at each of her attempts to make progress in the case of genocidal murderer, rapist and most despicable military commander she has been assigned to prosecute. A desperate victim of that commander's atrocities resorts to false testimony in a futile attempt to help the case before the tribunal and as a result, makes it all but impossible for Maynard to proceed when the defense attorney debunks the perjurer. Riddled with shame and despair the false witness kills himself. Maynard strong-minded sense of purpose manages to find a related real but reluctant witness (a rape victim herself); engaging that new witness to help, but too late to satisfy the court's protocols has now to deal with a new situation. She has placed that new witness and her family in harm's way and that family is 'revictimized '.In the end Maynard is betrayed by her husband, by the system she tried to serve and risks her career and future prospects by breaking the courts ordonnances just to allow the victim a chance to voice what the tribunal's process had denied her: telling the whole truth. The criminal walks away, the victim/witness' spirit is broken and so is Maynard.I enjoyed the experience but the spoiler I just blurted above will not likely make you want to see the movie; sorry. If you still plan on watching it, you are a true movie enthusiast and just a bit of a masochist I think.