For all the whirlwind menace on display in Twisters, a reboot of the silly-fun 1996 summer hit about storm chasers braving heartland funnel clouds (and most famous for an airborne cow), Minari director Lee Isaac Chung’s high-tech new update also has a swirling black hole at the center—the film bores whenever its pyrotechnically enhanced weather effects are offscreen. Where Jan de Bont’s original had amusement park thrills and a likable Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton courting in harm’s way, the new film has bigger effects, diminished charm and significantly less fun. When its superstorms aren’t raging, the wind gets knocked out of the picture.
Star Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People) is young Oklahoma weather enthusiast Kate Cooper, who when we meet her is furiously preparing to launch a dangerous experiment into a raging twister, a plan designed to disrupt and diminish the storm’s power. Chung mounts these high-stakes with genuine terror, kicking the film into immediate gear and establishing the rules of the game—get too close and violent death is imminent, as Kate’s unlucky boyfriend Jeb (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’s Daryl McCormack) fatally finds out.
A few years on Kate has settled in Manhattan as a budding meteorologist when her former fellow storm chaser and pal Javi (Anthony Ramos), who now works for a corporate outfit monitoring and modeling storm dynamics for commercial real estate and insurance entities (or something like that), pays a visit hoping to entice her back home. Javi, part of the team on that fateful day when Jeb and two additional friends perished, taps into Kate’s guilt over her ill-fated experiment, the pair returning to The Sooner State hoping to utilize advanced new tech to save storm-threatened lives. So far, so good.
Enter currently ubiquitous Hit Man Glen Powell—in cocksure Matthew McConaughey mode—as social media celebrity and good-old-boy Tyler Owens (Powell can do this in his sleep), a swaggering local daredevil storm chaser hustling tee-shirts and mugs—with his mug on them. Tyler’s handsome charm offensive doesn’t quite work on brainy Kate, who deems the heartland honcho an adrenaline junkie unserious about the science of storms. Predictably, the unlikely pair eventually team up, and the third leg of this triangle—well-played by Ramos, who makes something real out of nothing—is the odd man out.
You can see where this is going. Kate must find redemption after her former science project killed her friends, Tyler must reveal more substance than initially apparent and Kate and Javi must have a philosophical falling out. Predictably, Kate returns to her childhood home to reconnect with her adolescent meteorology ambitions and warmly direct single mom (an effective Maura Tierney). Thankfully, the picture stops short of expected romance in favor of amping up its “Tornado Alley” storms, which keep getting bigger, more ferocious and increasingly unexpected.
Amidst this scant plot there’s the matter of the category EF5 tornado, the fear of which is telegraphed early and upon arrival one that Chung constructs with sensationally visceral, you-are-there spatial disorientation (the seats in the Dolby cinema almost shook off the floor). Such moments, including the leveling of a rodeo and a monster funnel that makes handiwork of small town America during the climactic woman vs. wild showdown, work like adventure movie gangbusters. The 122-minute picture mounts five twisters, but really just three of them provide thrills, bookending and centering the fluff between.
Most effective are an exploding power station inconveniently in storm’s way and a movie theater ripped to shreds (a satirical commentary on the state of theatrical exhibition?) during a monster flick fest. Yet despite such impressive technical chops, the film’s pacing plods between its storms; the macro-stakes are gripping, but the personal ones—will Kate forgive herself, get together with Tyler and finally realize the ambitious goal of tempering a raging tempest?—are strictly downwind.
While Twisters’ special effects outdo themselves, writer Mark L. Smith’s screenplay merely checks the boxes, despite a few scenes giving voice to homeowners decimated by destruction, suggesting a requisite social responsibility (overlooked in the original) by disaster profiteers. Oddly, such responsibility does not extend to even a mere mention of global warming despite a brief mention of volatile, changing weather patterns. Instead, the screenplay trots out a formula commentary on commerce (Javi) vs. compassion (Kate) and a contrived, final reel change of heart—just in the nick of time to save a life.
Despite the appealing Edgar Jones’ best efforts—she calls to mind a coltish, spirited young Anne Hathaway—she is perhaps slightly less spunky than required; too exquisite, too fine of features. Powell, as ever, brings an easy charisma, and the pair’s nicest moment is a brief, rain-set exchange, he in the cab of his truck and she outside the window. It may have nothing to do with the plot proper—no tornadoes in sight—but everything to do with two handsome stars that might have made us care given a better screenplay.
The supporting cast deploys rising actors across inconsequential roles and given screen time: McCormack, Brandon Perea (Nope), David Corenswet (Pearl and the upcoming Superman reboot) and Katy M. O’Brian (terrific in this year’s Love Lies Bleeding), all looking appropriately terrified on cue, sucked into the orbit of appearing in a summer blockbuster. And why not?
2 stars
