Writer-Director Stashes a Dark but Comic Debut in ‘Storm’

During the pre-credit sequence, set in the winter of 1946, of David Winning’s taut, ambitious and darkly comic “Storm,” we watch three bank robbers, their faces hidden by ski masks, take a teller hostage, kill him and then bury their $750,000 haul in the woods.

We then flash to the present and find two university students, the nerdy, klutzy Lowell (David Palfy) and his friend, the assured, easygoing Booker (Tom Schioler) off to a weekend in those same woods. Wouldn’t you know they would cross paths with those same three crooks, who, having served 40-year sentences for killing the teller, are about to dig up their loot?

This is the stuff of which B movies are made, but Canadian writer-director Winning goes way beyond genre requirements. As one would hope, he wrings all the suspense out of the two different generations of men stalking each other like warring survivalists, but goes much further to explore the psyches of Lowell and the ex-cons’ leader, Jim (Stan Kane), a leathery Marlboro Man look-alike. Palfy’s intense Lowell is eccentric, self-absorbed, given to nightmare fantasies, including one in which a mock-assassination game with Booker, played in the deserted halls of a campus classroom building, turns real, with Lowell ending up dead.

If Lowell is haunted by insecurities and frustrations that he must overcome if he has a prayer of surviving a skirmish with Jim in the woods, the insatiably greedy Jim in turn finds himself haunted by fantasies of guilt, much to his surprise. Indeed, on one level, “Storm” works very effectively as a comment on the male psyche and how lethal the mix of fear and aggression can be when men have a need to prove their masculinity, for reasons imagined or real.

Typical of the film’s deft touches is that in an offhand way we’re told that Lowell and Booker are old friends, possibly even from childhood. This is crucial, because had not these two young men shared a past in common, you could not otherwise imagine them becoming friends. In his debut film, made for $72,000, David Winning displays a fine understanding and command of his medium’s visual resources. “Storm” (rated a lenient PG-13, considering all the bloodshed) should be an ideal calling card for Hollywood.