Available now from Breaking Glass Pictures
A duo of scientists comes across bank robbers while trying to experiment on a tornado. The robbers lose their loot and get the scientists roped into their problems, along with 2 influencers.
Written and directed by Dan Lantz, Cash Storm is the kind of film that throws everything and the kitchen sink at the wall and hopes something sticks or sticks around long enough to make a story. There is a ton in here and not all of it works but some does work decently well. Comparison is the killer of joy, so the comparison to The Hurricane Heist will be minimal: The story has some bits in common, but not much else beyond that. The story here is made for laughs and well, about 25% of the jokes land. It’s not terrible, but it’s also not great. Basically, it’s a movie that you can easily put on the background as you do something else, looking up at it from time to time, catching scenes here and there while still not missing much. The story is simple, the characters are caricatures, the dialog is often silly but it’s never boring, so it has that going for it. The writing and direction are on the same wavelength, not surprising they are both by the same person, and are not perfect but work decently throughout.
The performances here are ok to iffy, there’s nothing really mind-blowing or award-worthy in the performances, but most of them aren’t annoyingly bad. One of the main group of characters is not exactly great and a bit on the side of grating but that is how the film has her meant to be, so the acting is on point. Normally, here the best performances, or the worst ones, would be highlighted but the whole group of the cast seems to want to give good performances while limited by script, direction, budget, and experience. None of the performances are utterly terrible and none of them are great either, they do work, however. This being said, this is not exactly a film one watches for Oscars-worthy performances, so what we get here works and it makes the film a bit campier than it already was from the writing and direction.
The film here looks good with solid cinematography that makes the most of the story and locations with proper lighting and framing. It does look a bit like a SyFy original, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing here. The film looks good, allows for the action to be fully seen, and the cgi isn’t bad. This is not exactly high praise but the film is ok on this front.
Cash Storm is not great, not terrible, it just kind of is. It’s there, it works, it entertains, but those looking for a big budget disaster film, this isn’t it. It’s something to put on and mindlessly enjoy, giving space for the brain to either think of something else or just turn itself mostly off and be entertained.