Movie Review – Twisters
Principal Cast : Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane, Harry Hadden-Paton, David Corenswet, Daryl McCormack, Tunde Adebimpe, Kary O’Brian, Nik Dodani, Kiernan Shipka, Paul Scheer.
Synopsis: A retired tornado-chaser and meteorologist is persuaded to return to Oklahoma to work with a new team and new technologies.
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Minor inconsequential plot spoilers within. Proceed with appropriate caution.
Acknowledging Jan De Bont’s Twister as one of my top three, all-time favourite films (of any genre, ever), my expectations for this better-late-than-never sequel – some three decades distant from the original – were, if you’ll pardon the pun, sky high. Although the pang of nostalgia for the late Bill Paxton and Philip Seymour Hoffman, both of whom were intrinsic to the widescreen fun of Twister, still shrouds this high-octane windventure, there’s enough cast chemistry with the “new bunch”, alongside Lee Isaac Chung’s energetic direction, to make Twisters a solid action flick that will satisfy almost everyone.
Plot synopsis courtesy Wikipedia: Haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado, Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) gets lured back to the open plains by her friend, Javi (Anthony Ramos), to test a ground-breaking new tracking system. She soon crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a charming but reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures. As storm season intensifies, Kate, Tyler and their competing teams find themselves in a fight for their lives as multiple systems converge over central Oklahoma.
It’s very rare that a sequel to a Hollywood blockbuster, particularly one with the nostalgic adoration afforded Twister, stands alone as its own film, and yet Minari director Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters does exactly that. Twisters has no real link to the original film, save a few sneaky visual Easter eggs, and so a foreknowledge of the Jan de Bont actioner isn’t required, making it a near perfect widescreen VFX disaster epic wholly contingent on its own creativity, rather than beholden to any previous instalment. I half expected either the Daisy Edgar-Jones or Glen Powell characters to be somehow connected to either the Bill Paxton of Helen Hunt roles from the original film, but no, they are entirely without any previous strings attached. As with Twister, this sequel features a lot of “tornado chasing” antics, with two teams hunting down the deadly storms for different, and yet altogether similar motivations. The script is written by Mark L Smith from a story idea concocted by Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, no doubt a partnership forged on that film with co-star Glen Powell that has paid off here. It’s not a particularly inventive story, with a lot of similar elements to the original film in terms of its basic premise, not to mention the “rag-tag bunch of characters” forming the wider ensemble – note the appearance of soon-to-be Superman David Corenswet as an unscrupulous storm chaser data analyst, as well as The Mandalorian’s Katy O’Brian and a serviceable turn by Maura Tierney (Liar Liar), playing Kate’s mother, Cathy.
While the film owes a lot to the knockabout charm of the original’s chase-and-run setpieces, the supporting cast isn’t as instantly memorable, nor are the scientific stakes quite as high; that’s not to say there’s not plenty of catastrophic destruction, because part of the film’s energy is watching tornadoes tear through the American Midwest, but the emotional core of the film feels a little clumsily included and handled, despite earnest performances from all involved. While Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell make for Beautiful People viewing, and seeing them gradually shift towards romantic entanglement, Twisters does lack the effortless chemistry of the Bill Paxton/Helen Hunt pairing, more’s the pity. It’s a minor quibble, but the absence of a solid romantic tension cruels Twisters’ central emotional core somewhat. Yet, Powell and Edgar-Jones do solid work, with Edgar-Jones playing the Paxton role of “weather diviner”, able to detect how storms will form, where they will go, and when, with considerable conviction. In a move that tickled my notion of serendipity, at one point they managed to get her into a white singlet, an echo of Helen Hunt’s iconic look from the original film; I did appreciate this nod, perhaps the best of all those included. Powell, as the square-jawed, slightly douche-y Tyler Owens, has just enough charm beneath the swagger to make him the “bad boy” all the girls want here, and he maximises his charm with a solid, if undemanding, central role. The weirdly atonal third string to this guitar is Anthony Ramos as Javi, who struggles to feel as intuitive to the film as I’d have liked. Ramos is an actor of particular style, and I don’t think he “fits” into Twisters’ high-octane thrills as comfortably as the film demands – I had similar issues with his turn in Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts, unfortunately – but he’s serviceable with a part that, in many respects, could have been excised wholesale without affecting the film much at all.
All that said, I had an absolute blast with Twisters. The action is well mounted and in keeping with the tone and mechanics of the first film, the sweeping cinematography of the Oklahoman horizons by Dan Mindel’s beautiful camerawork is superb, and as you might expect, the sound design ranges from intimately precise to devastatingly thunderous. Benjamin Wallfisch’s score, parallel with the zippy needle drops sprinkled throughout, apes Mark Mancina’s open-range orchestrations but lacks the heft despite energetic attempts to achieve it, although again, this is a minor frustration that in no way diminishes the fun I had with it. The visual effects are plentiful and magnificent, state of the art tornadoes delivering the requisite smack-and-doom crackle of danger we expect from such a film, and as the destruction escalates through various category storms the flostam and jetsam of detritus slams into the screen with white-knuckle ferocity. A terrifying moment in which a fuel refinery appears to go up within the spout of a twister is a particularly frantic moment of tension, as is a truly gripping sequence at a rodeo that culminates in our heroes having to escape death in an empty swimming pool. Lee Isaac Chung’s direction is exceptionally good in both the moments of action and the quieter, introspective aspects, despite the relatively simplistic broad-brush strokes afforded the characters and their plights. It was a directorial effort I wasn’t expecting considering his restrained work on the sublime Minari, but Chung has a solid grasp of balancing various story arcs, cross-cutting character beats within a sequence, and maximising the dramatic weight of an emotional scene regardless of its potency.
Twisters is a whole swag of entertainment. It’s “big dumb fun” as only Hollywood can command, a delightfully blustery effects-driven extravaganza that ratchets up our inherent fear of bad weather with a superb mix of bombast and derivative emotional heft. The characters are barely two dimensional but it matters not, for their story isn’t the main point of the movie. Nope, that’s for the twisters, and boy howdy do they deliver. Glen Powell is charming as hell yet again, Daisy Edgar-Jones is commendably committed to the part, the wider ensemble are all your typical gaggle of weirdos and nutbags, and watching them all interact is charming, if not quite as effortless as seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman elaborate on the suck zone. Yes, Twisters might have its issues (there’s no flying livestock, more’s the pity, although some chickens cop a brutal hit at one point) but they’re all overlooked with this delirious slam-bang throwback-to-the-90’s action that satisfies in the most popcorn-ready way possible. Make sure you see it on the loudest, biggest screen you can. An absolute treat.
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