Chasing the Thunder (Mark Benjamin, Marc Levin, 2018): USA

Reviewed by Anton Jacobsson, Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2018.

Mark Benjamin and Marc Levin who directed this documentary have both a lot of experience in the film industry. Benjamin is mostly famous for his cinematography work and for being the producer of the Tv series Brick City(2009). Levin is known for being producer for the drama movie Slam(1998). Both Levin and Benjamin were working on the Slam together with Benjamin as the Cinematographer.

This documentary was made from a tv series documentary called Ocean Warriors which were around six hours long, they later cut that down to less than two ours to make it a feature length film.

Chasing the Thunder is about a 110 days chase of a fishing ship called the Thunder. The Thunder has been fishing illegally for years but no one had done anything to stop it. We follow Captain Peter and Captain Sid and their crews on this three month journey to try to make the Thunder stop and to face their consequences for this illegal actions. This hunt ended up quickly in a game of cat and mouse and the Thunder tried numerous times to get rid of the Captain Peter and Captain Sid for example by going through an obstacle course of giant ice floes.

This documentary is really tense and action packed even though they are just following a boat for over a hundred days. There were a lot of obstacles to go through and a lot of stuff happening which made it interesting to watch. The variation of shots were really well put together even though they could only shot from their two ships and from a motorboat.

I thought this documentary was great. It had a lot of action and that made it more fun to watch and with a unexpected ending.