TWISTERS : Tuesday 16th July 2024.

I saw the M Rated 'TWISTERS' at my local multiplex this week, and this American action adventure disaster film is Directed by Lee Isaac Chung who rose to fame and recognition with 'Minari' in 2020 which went on to collect 122 award wins and a further 245 nominations from around the awards and festival circuit. This film is a stand alone sequel to the 1996 film 'Twister' which starred Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, was Directed Jan de Bont and grossed US$495M against a production budget of US$90M. This film had a production budget of about US$180M and was released stateside this week on 19th July, has so far grossed US$31M and has received positive critical acclaim.

The films opens up with a team of storm chasers in Oklahoma, led by Kate Copper (Daisy Edgar-Jones), her love interest Jeb (Daryl McCormack), Javi (Anthony Ramos), Addy (Kiernan Shipka) and Praveen (Nik Dodani) as they battle against all odds to suck the energy out of a category EF5 tornado armed with barrels of a compound akin to what they make disposable nappies from. Initially expecting the said tornado to be a category EF1 or EF2 it quickly spirals into a category EF5 leaving the gang of five to attempt to take shelter under a road bridge, only for Praveen to be sucked into the vortex followed quickly by Addy and then Jeb while he is trying to protect Kate who is clinging onto a railing for dear life. In the heat of the moment Kates leg is badly slashed by a piece of flying debris. She emerges sometime later to a countryside laid to waste.

We then fast forward five years and Kate is seen working at a New York meteorology office and has seemingly settled into her new life and far away from chasing down twisters in Oklahoma's Tornado Alley. Into the office that same day sidles Javi who is now a well meaning entrepreneur with a plan to lure Kate back to Oklahoma by using some of the latest 3D image capturing devices to gain a far better understanding of what makes tornado's tick. Javi meanwhile seems to be on the payroll of a morally corrupt real estate agent wanting to purchase the land for a song from the victims of the tornado's devastating impacts and when they are at their most vulnerable. Kate is initially dismissive of Javi's suggestion, but soon comes round and takes a week off work to study tornado's up close and personal as storm season ramps up across Oklahoma. 

Arriving in Oklahoma at a meeting point with a rag tag bunch of other amateur storm chasers, Kate meets Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) who goes by the moniker of 'Tornado Wrangler' - a seemingly charming but often reckless social media superstar who thrives on posting to his own YouTube channel his storm chasing exploits and has had over one million views. On Tyler's team there is also Boone (Brandon Perea) the videographer, Lilly (Sasha Lane) the drone operator, Dexter (Tunde Adebimpe) and Dani (Katy O'Brian) a mechanic, as well as Ben (Harry Hadden-Paton) a south London journalist who is profiling Tyler. We are also introduced to Scott (David Corenswet) - Javi's business partner. 

What follows is a series of twisters that both Javi and Tyler compete for to get there first before said tornado's slice a swathe of destruction through central Oklahoma leaving levelled towns and villages in their wake. In the meantime, we have Javi and Scott coming to blows over Javi's steadfast belief in Kate's ability to locate the next twister just by looking at the cloud formations, the direction the wind is blowing and how much precipitation there is in the air; plus Javi's belief that they should stop and help the clean up efforts at the devastated towns they pass through rather that Scott's POV that they should call in their unscrupulous real estate business partner.

And then there is the interest that Kate and Tyler are developing for each other. Kate decides to look up her Mum, Cathy (Maura Tierney) whom she hasn't seen or spoken to in a long while and who lives on a farm a couple of hours drive away. The pair reconnect and the next day Tyler rocks up unexpectedly and is invited to stay overnight by Cathy. In the shed on the farm property lies Kate's mock up of small town with a large fan placed underneath with which she used to create her own indoor tornado's as part of her scientific experiments, plus all of her note books journalling her theories, successes and failures. All of this leads Tyler and Kate to contact Javi and ask him for the hard-drive of the 3D images that they had so far captured from targeting a twister. This data in turn enables them to determine with greater accuracy the validity of Kate's earlier hypothesis. Armed with this data, and about a dozen barrels of sodium polyacrylate (the super absorbent compound found in those disposable nappies), the pair venture out to locate the next twister and release the stuff. 

The pair arrive in El Reno, Oklahoma and can see that a twister is already forming and making its presence felt on the outskirts of the town. The local townsfolk all begin to scatter and panic as the tornado forms into an EF5 and so begins its destructive force on the town. Javi and Scott are in hot pursuit and observing that a desperate situation is about to unfold on El Reno, Javi says that they need to go and help while Scott is adamant that they need to give their real estate contact the heads-up, and to forget about the people of the soon to be flattened town. Javi wins the day and leaves Scott abandoned on the side of the road out of town. 

With a tornado bearing down Tyler, Kate and Javi corral as many of the townsfolk as they can into a local movie theatre for protection from the storm, however, the roof gets ripped off as does the outer wall in front of which is the cinema screen, with Tyler barely clinging on to Lilly from being sucked out into the vortex. In the meantime, Kate has driven Tyler's truck into the base of the tornado and has successfully launched the sodium polyacrylate into the heart of the twister, with it having the desired effect and effectively drying out the tornado from within. Within a couple of minutes the storm has eased, and so Tyler and Javi run across the field to Kate's aid.

In the closing scene Javi drops Kate off at the airport to catch her return flight home to New York. Tyler pulls up in his truck and the two men bid an uneasy farewell to Kate, with Kate's closing words to Tyler being his own credo 'if you feel it, chase it!' Standing at the departure gate Kate hears a message that her flight has been delayed due to a severe weather warning at which point Tyler emerges by her side and the pair leave the airport together.

'Twisters' is certainly worth the price of your cinema ticket, and for all the expertly rendered CGI effects this film makes for compelling viewing on a big screen as the cloud formations, the swirling violent vortex of the twisters themselves, the flying debris and the destruction on the ground in the aftermath are writ large on a grand scale. Both Powell and Edgar-Jones give convincing performances which helps in carrying the storyline forward in a grounded and realistic manner, although a little bit of a romantic relationship between the pair would not have gone amiss either. Whilst it is more than likely to cement its place as one of this season's blockbuster offerings, I couldn't help feel that the plot was a little predictable, and just a rehash of the 1996 original brought up to date with modern day effects and lots of scientific mumbo jumbo that you have to take with a handful of salt. That said, Director Lee Isaac Chung has crafted a film that is sure to please fans of the disaster genre, and offer up something new to those fans unfamiliar with its predecessor.

'Twisters' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-