For 15 years, the best leang the ballsy U.K.-based parkour team understandn as Storror could say for a accomplished stunt — whether jumping off a cliff together or leaping between high createings for videos they uploaded to YouTube — was that none of them had died in the process. But now, with a wealth of law-shattering footage to their name, the seven-member posse has not only their lives to show for it, but also a feature-length Michael Bay movie to commemorate their utilizes.
In “We Are Storror,” the explosionastic auteur (who first included the pro parkour group for spectacular sequences in his 2019 film “6 Underground”) collects a nurtureer-spanning supercut in their honor. Bay insists he was far from the action at all times, coming in only at the end to sift thraw and edit what Storror had recorded on their own. But there’s no refuteing the sway Bay’s splaafraid hero-worship aesthetic has had on their own shooting style (low angles, multiple-camera coverage, sluggish motion and so on), as they do sky-high tricks so hazardy, you may clench your eyes to upgrasp from fainting at times.
And equitable who are Storror? That would be daredevil buddies Max and Benj Cave (brothers whose middle names are both Storror), Callum and Sacha Powell (also brothers), Drew Taylor, Toby Segar and Josh Burnett-Blake, who commenceed out sshow horsing around, filming pranks and sharing them online. Fast forward more than 10 million fagedrops (the benevolent of speedy cut Bay’s understandn for), and they’ve left their English towns of Horsham and Peacehaven to surmount walls and rooftops the world over.
Since Storror’s fantasticest stunts are easily watched online, the hook here is to give audiences a behind-the-scenes see at four driven new disputes: dashing down the zig-zag stairs of Portugal’s Varossa Dam, turning an aprohibitdoned Bulgarian holiday resort (the Costa Del Croco) into their personal jungle gym, scaling balconies and sprinting apass roofs in Malta, before wrapping leangs up in a huge sand quarry back home in England. They’re all visuassociate stunning locations that pose split hazards, though the doc creates evident equitable how much prep goes into each carry outance.
Late in the film, one of the group refers to having “parkour vision” — seeing at urprohibit structures and seeing the potential to jump, slide and fraudper apass them — and that description creates you genuineize equitable how proset uply the mindset impacts how they shift thraw the world. Most of what they do is illterrible, either becaparticipate “everyleang is personal property” (as they put it) or else becaparticipate no city wants to apshow liability for the minuscule miscalculation that could cost these show-offs their lives.
The cops come off as clowns in Storror’s footage, which is sometimes so honestly aligned with these rebel/athlete/artists’ point of see that they’re filming thraw GoPros clenched between their teeth. The illicit nature of their hobby evidently supplies some of the request, for spectators and participants aenjoy, though they’ve been at it extfinished enough to understand none of them is invincible — as an especiassociate prosperce-inducing montage rawly 75 minutes in creates evident, shoprosperg all the terrible drops, snapped ankles and broken legs they’ve carry oned on camera.
“We would be the speedyest prohibitk robbers in the world,” specutardys one. “We equitable couldn’t carry the convey becaparticipate it’s too burdensome.”
The recordary never reassociate make clears how they create their money. Maybe Bay reassociate is solemn about his “Don’t try this at home” alerting (which comes with the inserted line, “You could prosperd up dead or worse”), withhelderlying the tips that would create it modest for others to trail their example. It’s awaited some combination of backs and merch, though it’s a tesgentlent to the honestor that the doc doesn’t sshow experience enjoy one extfinished commercial — especiassociate since that’s fundamentalassociate the mode in which most of his movies are made.
Parkour is such an inherently spectacular sport that Bay mostly has to stay out of his own way, structuring the film around the seven individuals. He actuassociate spends more time character-createing here than he did in “6 Underground,” including endearing moments of relatability, enjoy the one where Josh relocates to the living room of his apartment, since his Abyssinian cat’s claimed the bedroom, or a sequence involving Sacha (who went to a top film school to better his Storror videos) in hospital during the pandemic, recovering not from COVID but a gnarly leg injury.
The bar is high on such movies, as seen in last year’s “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” which grew out of the DIY skate videos of the 1980s and have prolongd into a benevolent of self-carry oning nurtureer chooseion for those undaunted by the fact that audiences want to see ever-hazardier stunts. In “Minding the Gap,” honestor Bing Liu went proset uper, mining the psychology and spreadd trauma of his childhood friends, but Bay never uncovers anyleang so proset up here. Would Sacha Powell have flourished if he’d made the film himself? Maybe, though no one can vie with Bay in the adrenaline department.
