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Thursday, 18 July 2019

Cheapo DVD Review: Stormbirds (2019)

Also known as Greyhound Attack because that totally makes sense. 

Europe 1944:

   US Pilots over Germany are becoming spooked by reports of  Nazi jet fighters and massive rockets.

   A pair of brothers serving on the same B17 are reluctantly parted

  And in a secret factory a Jewish scientist reluctantly aids the Third Reich in developing  superweapons while next door a stuck-up diva broadcasts propaganda across the radio waves.

You can't fault the producers of Stormbirds for thinking big because they definitely aimed at making a proper WW2 epic. 

Unfortunately this movie not only fails to live up to those aims, it doesn't even live up to its own DVD sleeve. 

That's a cool sleeve, isn't it? Lots of action and Mustangs zooming here there and everywhere. 

The film itself is mostly people talking in front of green-screen backgrounds and not particularly good green-screen either.  I've seen better green-screen work used in home-made rap videos put together in a teenagers bedroom.  Then there's the action sequences and for that all I need to do is post one single image:


  Since a film about WW2 fighters does need to show some actual fighters at some point,  the director throws in some footage clearly shot at a Warbirds Airshow -  which explains why a mission crucual to the War effort is performed by just two aircraft and neither of them is a bomber. 

  Stormbirds does have other problems beside the lack of graphics and the lack of action.

  None of the story threads above seem to have much to do with each other and some could easily have been cut out.  I was also not happy when the last five minutes or so was quite clearly setting things up for a Part 2 that will likely never happen.  Stormbirds has barely got enough going on for one movie so there's no bloody way they can make a trilogy out of it.

   To sum up:  I ended up feeling sorry for  the actors involved. I also ended up stretching my viewing out over about 5 sessions because watching Stormbirds was such a painful experience.  
Don't bother. 


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