“Twisters” is not really a sequel to “Twister,” the 1996 movie that starred Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. It boasts none of the same characters, or the children of those in the original. There is a tiny reference to a piece of equipment with the same name, but you don’t have to have seen the other movie to understand anything in this update. It stands alone.
As such, it is one of the most entertaining action/adventure/disaster movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You don’t even have to wait long before you’re in the midst of a tornado, the first of several to come over its two-hour runtime.
Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Kate, a brilliant scientist who chases tornadoes in the midwest in order to study them, and has a theory about how she can reduce their ferocity. She works with Javi (Anthony Ramos) and several other storm chasers. When bad things happen in the opening sequence, Kate puts that career aside to work for the National Weather Service in New York. But when Javi comes calling and has both financing and Defense Department technology to deploy, Kate joins his new team, all of whom wear the company logo on their hats, t-shirts, and the white vans they drive. They look like the inverse image of Cary Elwes’ black-clad team from the first movie.
Back in Oklahoma, Kate discovers that Javi has competition from Tyler (Glen Powell), who calls himself a Tornado Wrangler and comes off like a good old boy with a large YouTube following. Tyler’s team is a ragtag bunch of people who don’t have degrees, but lots of knowledge and plenty of attitude. They reminded me of Helen Hunt’s cohort, which included a young Philip Seymour Hoffman and Alan Ruck (long before he became Connor Roy on “Succession”).
With this movie on the heels of last month’s “Hit Man” (which I raved about here), the “Top Gun” sequel (which I reviewed here), and the romcom “Anyone But You,” Powell has firmly established himself as the leading man of the moment. In “Twisters,” he mixes his natural charm with brashness, humor, and some nice chemistry with Edgar-Jones. For her part, I didn’t hear a hint of her native British accent — she sounds just like an American from the midwest. Like Hunt’s character in the original, Edgar-Jones’ Kate is far from the typical damsel in distress. She’s the smartest person in every scene.
You don’t need to know much more, except you’re going to see a bunch of tornadoes and the destruction they cause. Screenwriter Mark L. Smith makes sure that we see the impact of mother nature on towns destroyed by her wrath — and makes his characters empathetic to the plight of the victims. The special effects are so good I couldn’t tell which were digital and were practical, but I admit at one point when some debris was coming straight at the camera, I ducked in my movie theater seat. And it’s not even in 3-D. And no, the flying object was not a cow.
Kudos to director Lee Isaac Chung (who was responsible for the Oscar-nominated “Minari”) for maintaining a good balance of human interaction, a lot of science-speak we don’t have to understand, a few funny lines, and some truly frightening sequences of funnel clouds wreaking havoc on wherever they touch down.
Having lived in Missouri for a quarter-century, I’m very familiar with the fear that comes with a tornado warning. We had a big one come through the St. Louis area in April, 2011, ripping off half of Lambert Airport’s roof, with additional damage along the way. I remember seeing the sky turn green and then brown — which are not good colors to see overhead unless you’re in an arboretum.
When the tornado sirens sound, as they do a few times every spring, we immediately head to our basement, where we use our iPhones to check the reports from the local TV stations about where the storm is headed. But I’ve always thought the tornado warnings would be much more effective if they didn’t sound like a single tone blasting out for several minutes. I think they’d get the attention of a lot more people if they used an edited loop of the “Ooga Chucka, Ooga Chucka” opening from Blue Suede’s 1974 version of “Hooked On A Feeling.” Not only would that make you perk up, it would be so annoying after a couple of minutes that you’d go to your basement just to get away from it.
“Twisters” is a helluva ride and a damned good popcorn movie that’s going to make a lot of money. I enjoyed it enough to give it a rating of 9 out of 10.
It opens tomorrow night in theaters — and this is one you want to see on a big screen to get the full impact of those amazing effects.