Michael Bay Doc Exhibits Actual-Life Motion Heroes

For 15 years, one of the best factor the ballsy U.Okay.-based parkour group generally known as Storror might say for a profitable stunt — whether or not leaping off a cliff collectively or leaping between tall buildings for movies they uploaded to YouTube — was that none of them had died within the course of. However now, with a wealth of law-breaking footage to their title, the seven-member posse has not solely their lives to point out for it, but in addition a feature-length Michael Bay film to commemorate their exploits.

In “We Are Storror,” the bombastic auteur (who first engaged the professional parkour group for spectacular sequences in his 2019 movie “6 Underground”) assembles a career-spanning supercut of their honor. Bay insists he was removed from the motion always, coming in solely on the finish to sift via and edit what Storror had documented on their very own. However there’s no denying the affect Bay’s splashy hero-worship aesthetic has had on their very own taking pictures type (low angles, multiple-camera protection, sluggish movement and so forth), as they do sky-high tips so dangerous, chances are you’ll clench your eyes to maintain from fainting at instances.

And simply who’re Storror? That may be daredevil buddies Max and Benj Cave (brothers whose center names are each Storror), Callum and Sacha Powell (additionally brothers), Drew Taylor, Toby Segar and Josh Burnett-Blake, who began out merely horsing round, filming pranks and sharing them on-line. Quick ahead greater than 10 million followers (the form of fast lower Bay’s identified for), and so they’ve left their English cities of Horsham and Peacehaven to overcome partitions and rooftops the world over.

Since Storror’s best stunts are simply watched on-line, the hook right here is to offer audiences a behind-the-scenes take a look at 4 bold new challenges: dashing down the zig-zag stairs of Portugal’s Varossa Dam, turning an deserted Bulgarian vacation resort (the Costa Del Croco) into their private jungle fitness center, scaling balconies and sprinting throughout roofs in Malta, earlier than wrapping issues up in an enormous sand quarry again house in England. They’re all visually beautiful areas that pose separate dangers, although the doc makes clear simply how a lot prep goes into every efficiency.

Late within the movie, one of many group refers to having “parkour imaginative and prescient” — taking a look at city buildings and seeing the potential to leap, slide and scamper throughout them — and that description makes you understand simply how deeply the mindset impacts how they transfer via the world. Most of what they do is prohibited, both as a result of “every little thing is personal property” (as they put it) or else as a result of no metropolis desires to take legal responsibility for the tiny miscalculation that might price these show-offs their lives.

The cops come off as clowns in Storror’s footage, which is typically so straight aligned with these anarchist/athlete/artists’ viewpoint that they’re filming via GoPros clenched between their tooth. The illicit nature of their pastime clearly provides among the enchantment, for spectators and individuals alike, although they’ve been at it lengthy sufficient to know none of them is invincible — as an particularly wince-inducing montage roughly 75 minutes in makes clear, exhibiting all of the unhealthy falls, snapped ankles and damaged legs they’ve sustained on digital camera.

“We’d be the quickest financial institution robbers on the planet,” speculates one. “We simply couldn’t carry the convey as a result of it’s too heavy.”

The documentary by no means actually explains how they make their cash. Perhaps Bay actually is critical about his “Don’t do that at house” warning (which comes with the added line, “You would wind up lifeless or worse”), withholding the ideas that might make it simple for others to comply with their instance. It’s possible some mixture of sponsors and merch, although it’s a testomony to the director that the doc doesn’t merely really feel like one lengthy industrial — particularly since that’s mainly the mode wherein most of his films are made.

Parkour is such an inherently spectacular sport that Bay principally has to remain out of his personal approach, structuring the movie across the seven people. He really spends extra time character-building right here than he did in “6 Underground,” together with endearing moments of relatability, just like the one the place Josh relocates to the lounge of his condo, since his Abyssinian cat’s claimed the bed room, or a sequence involving Sacha (who went to a prime movie college to enhance his Storror movies) in hospital in the course of the pandemic, recovering not from COVID however a gnarly leg harm.

The bar is excessive on such films, as seen in final yr’s “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” which grew out of the DIY skate movies of the Nineteen Eighties and have advanced right into a form of self-sustaining profession possibility for these undaunted by the truth that audiences wish to see ever-riskier stunts. In “Minding the Hole,” director Bing Liu went deeper, mining the psychology and shared trauma of his childhood pals, however Bay by no means uncovers something so profound right here. Would Sacha Powell have succeeded if he’d made the movie himself? Perhaps, although nobody can compete with Bay within the adrenaline division.