Storm Rider: Legend of Hammerhead is a fascinating idea: What if a couple dudes just… made up a franchise? Something that takes all the tropes and visual cues of being based on a comic book or young adult novel series, just without the source material.
On paper this movie should whip ass. The premise sounds like exactly the kind of nonsense a young adult fantasy author who’s read a few Ray Bradbury short stories would cook up. There’s always an incredibly simple 1970s sci-fi premise at the core with a bunch of marketable modern movie tropes layered on top. The big bad even kind of evokes a bygone time when you’d find a Yule Brynner type and put him in futuristic clothing just ‘cus the face was severe enough to pull it off.
Turns out: you kinda need that 3.5/5 quality young adult novel as a jumping off point for something like this.
In the Storm Rider universe Earth experienced a massive flood. Hundreds of years ago, functionally immortal beings called The Founders discovered an archipelago with surviving humans surrounded by an eternal storm preventing anyone from leaving by boat. The Founders constructed a giant walled city and, because it’s a dystopian sci-fi, host “Storm Rider” competitions.
Each race, islands that want to be protected by Argos send a champion to drive a big battle boat really fast in a death race. Whoever wins gets protection and their people welcomed into Argos. Whichever island loses has its population banished by Argos and is strip-mined for its resources.
This is the part where I wish I could tell you this is a big doofy boat action movie with some kickass action sequences. Sure, it’s a European-funded movie with all the awkward accents and off-brand Hollywood vibes that brings along with it. Sure, the writing feels amateurish (don’t pay attention to the fact one of the two directors wrote it). But it’s got big boats slamming into each other! Water action! Halfway decent visual effects!
Unfortunately I can let all of the air out of Storm Riders’ proverbial sails without spoiling a single plot point. The races are the exact same course, every time. All of the boats are almost indistinguishable. No custom paint jobs or quirky modifications. No hot-shot champion characters the protagonist has to outperform to keep his place in a competition. No changing locales as the movie progresses.
They go straight out to a rock, turn around, and come back. That’s the race. It is never switched up. I could do a gaslight edit of this movie where I swap footage from different races and nobody would notice.
You know how in racing movies there’s always a shot of a character who seemingly was already going top speed magically shifting into a higher gear, or slamming a pedal down even harder? The only way Storm Rider can infer a character is going faster is by cutting to their hand pushing a lever all the way forward. This then cuts to a shot of a spinning rusty alternator spinning marginally faster. We then cut outside to see the boat going maybe three knots faster than the boats around it. Which then leads to any other named character also slamming that lever forward so their alternator spins faster so they go faster too. If I wanted to watch characters constantly hit a “go faster” button in such a way nobody actually goes decidedly faster than each other, I’d just watch a bad anime.
Speaking of anime: The dubbing is trash. I presume the movie is in English in hopes of making it a success in the U.S. but so many characters are fighting for their lives to make an accent, any accent, conform to their lines. An unseen reporter/race announcer, who gives most of the exposition for good chunks of the film, sounds like every time a Saturday Night Live cast member has tried to poke fun as a generic European accent. Dude’s inflections are all over the place.
There’s a lot of potential to this movie. You can see the seeds of what was intended to grow into something with five sequels and an infinitely-renewable plot. Instead none of the cool ideas are actually explored. The movie seems allergic to the idea of exploring the cultures of the islands, the Founders, Argos, or really anything of interest outside the specific requirements of the main plot.
Why? Probably because editing this thing must have been an absolute nightmare. There are so many scenes where a character whose mouth is clearly visible isn’t moving while dubbed dialog inserts vital exposition. I spotted at least one scene where it’s clear they 3D modeled a balcony for one of the bad guys to be watching the protagonist from, but then it cuts to the bad guy simply standing at one of the walls of a Mediterranean location they shot at. Completely wrong angle, clearly not what’s visible in the background of the green screen VFX shot of the protagonist. Cut back to the protagonist and bam: CGI set returns.
I don’t know if it was reshoots, or a planning screwup, or what. All I know is this movie is b-r-o-k-e-n to the point it needs to replay footage at a shockingly regular pace. Argos has a rudimentary TV system that people can watch the boat races on. You best believe every single shot of the Storm Rider boat races are just shots from earlier in the movie. Visions are a big part of the protagonist’s journey. Which is just an excuse to both show old footage from earlier as he remembers things, as well as show clips from later in the movie. Which you will see again when he catches up to that moment in time… as well as later when he remembers catching up to that moment in time.
I walked in expecting a clunky movie with fun boat fights or some goofy chosen-one narrative. I got a clunky movie. Who knows? Perhaps this’ll perform well enough we get a sequel that builds on the promising bits of the world-building. There’s something in there, but in its current state it absolutely is not with the time and energy investment of sitting through 30 minutes of trailers. Even the snarky Letterboxd review saying “This is what AMC A-List is for” is overselling its in-theater utility.
Gavin Gaddis Reviews 