Another sub-par tale starring the man who used to be king of the violent B-movie, this television-movie-style offering tells the hackneyed tale of a man, framed for a heinous crime, pursued by sinister government agent types and betrayed by those closest to him as part of a government conspiracy. The tale has been done before, many times, and its simple to spot plot elements lifted from DIE HARD, THE X-FILES, even John Carpenter's ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 for one crazy moment. Unfortunately, STORM CATCHER is not as good as any of the films it seeks to emulate, instead landing squarely in the middle of the straight-to-video world: neither bad enough to be funny or good enough to be exciting.The stultifying scenes of plot development are punctuated by the occasionally cheesy highlight (I love the overacted hospital interlude – "I need a doctor! I need a doctor!") but its not enough to make this worthwhile. To pad out the thin story, we get plenty of footage of planes (good enough) and lots of cheap and cheerful special effects. Unfortunately the action choreography is poor, Dolph doesn't even get to do any martial arts, and the shoot-outs lack impact, shying away from the bloodshed despite the high body count. Don't even get me started on the cast; I recognised three principle players, with the rest filling out incredible clichéd parts: the obnoxious crying child-in-danger, the black comic relief, the various faceless and personality-free bad guys. Kylie Bax wins awards for her chronic bad acting (absolutely hopeless) and shares the trait of having a silly name with most of her fellow cast members (you know you're in trouble the minute the credits roll).Dolph is his usual dependable action self, looking good, and surprisingly he is the best actor in this particular film. The bad guy Robert Miano is revealed in an oh-so-surprising-plot-twist, and is recognisable from his role in dozens of such offerings, although I personally know him as the bad guy in the hit '90s video game PHANTASMAGORIA. One favourable character is Scully rip-off Agent Lock, played by no other than Kimberley Davies, who you may remember as the delectable Annalise Hartman in NEIGHBOURS. Yep, she's still looking as hot as ever. Once-promising director Anthony Hickox wastes his talents here and is far from his interesting beginnings – although he is amusing as the Fox Mulder-wannabe CIA agent.

Dolph Lundgren stars as Air Force pilot ace Jack Halloway, a family man and all around tough guy who finds himself involved in a conspiracy which involves a stealth plane that can tip the scales in the arms race and such has been stolen, not by a foreign competitor but by American War mongers who have been passed up for promotions and ignored by their country in this deadly boring Lundgren flick. Dolph Lundgren has made some fun B.movies but Storm Catcher isn't one of them. Starting with the lack of action, not much happens and the majority of such takes place on an air plane. Such would be acceptable if the dogfights were fun (Via Top Gun, Iron Eagle, Blue Thunder etc) but these are woefully boring. The story is completely boring and clichéd with bland villains and lame conspiracy subplots that go nowhere. As for Lundgren he clearly looks bored here, he refuses to act and barely puts any effort in filming his fight sequences. The best thing one can say is that there is some graphic violence that threatens to make the movie sort of interesting (usually because of it being hokey) but this is just a dull movie all around. With Lundgren's resurgence on the big screen, one can look at this movie as a personal low in Lundgren's career. Indeed something like The Punisher, Showdown In Little Tokyo and Universal Soldier were ridiculous movies, but they were fun. Storm Catcher on the other hand is just ridiculous.* out of 4-(Bad)

When you hear the name Dolph Lundgren, you rarely think of quality films. I can't off the top of my head name one single good film I've seen him in. However, you can usually count on him being a good lead in the typical more-Braun-than-brain action-flick. This film is a tad bit uneven, but it doesn't deserve its low rating and bad rep. The plot is not original, but the twists are fairly good(I didn't see them coming, at least) and the pacing is above par for the genre. The acting is a bit below average in some scenes, but it's mostly satisfactory. The characters are pretty much one-note and underdeveloped. The cinematography is stylish, but there are times when it's a bit overdone(you know how, sometimes when you watch a film, you're wondering if the cameraman has fallen asleep? There were times during this where I wondered if the cameraman was sober). The director uses slow-motion a bit too often, particularly during action scenes. To counter that, however, there's some very good camera-movement in some of the action scenes as well. The one-liners get to be a bit over the top in some parts of the film. The action is usually intense, but a bit too often it's unrealistic, to the point where it becomes completely unbelievable(a goon's gun running out of ammo in a half a second burst, for example). The film managed to do something quite unusual for the genre, namely surprise me several times. I thought on more than one occasion that I had figured out exactly what was going to happen next, but the film surprised me. Something that bothered me(being a weapons enthusiast) was the amateurish way the guns were handled. Many silenced weapons made the sounds of non-silenced guns of a completely different type. Of course, that probably won't impact the viewing experience for anyone who isn't interested in weapons. All in all, good for a single viewing, if you can catch it for free. I recommend it to fans of the typical action-flick and/or Dolph Lundgren. Not particularly good, but you could do a lot worse. 5/10

** HERE MIGHT BE SPOILERS **Jack Holloway (Lundgren) leads a flight team testing and developing a new type of stealth aircraft, intended to be used in possible covert operations and warfare. However, the aircraft get stolen and Holloway is set up to take the blame. And then the real terrorists try to kill him, and when he escapes tries to kill him and his family. As he cannot turn to police or the military he decides to track down the terrorists himself, with help from good friend Sparks (Clark), and the track leads inside the military.As expected, this is no great movie, but it is not bad either. It is good action without trying to complicate matters. By keeping it simple it manages, with few exceptions, to avoid really bad scenes. The cast does a good job, and the story is interesting and fast paced enough to keep at least my interest up. Unfortunately it lacks some parts and pieces to climb up the credit ladder. So, average but entertaining.5/10