Twisters: Movie Review

Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glenn Powell, Anthony Ramos
Director: Lee Isaac Chung

If 1996' s Twister was a revolutionary blockbuster spectacular that had both heart and state of the art FX, the latest 2024 companion piece and contender to the throne packs a lot of sound and fury, but ultimately blows itself out.

Choosing to centre the action on a couple of young good-looking people, Twisters puts Daisy Edgar- Jones' Kate on a collision course with disaster very early on.  Working to a theory that storms can be tamed and showing off the skills of a storm whisperer, Kate's prescience ends up leaving three colleagues - including her beau - killed in pursuit of her dream.

Fast forward five years later and Kate has all but given up chasing storms. That is until Ramos' former fellow chaser Javi turns up asking for her help to try and save America's mid-west from an unseasonably bad stormfront whipping through tornado alley.

Grappling with PTSD and guilt, Kate reluctantly joins the chase - only to collide with hillbilly Tyler Owens (Powell in full-on charisma assault ,pde) whose polar opposite approach sees him showboating, livestreaning and generally swaggering as much as is humanly possible.

But much like weather fronts colliding, the pair run hot and cold before revelations rock their worldviews as the tornado season picks up steam.

Twisters largely feels like a cheesy, yet somehow affable, blockbuster that concentrates only on its main trio of characters, despite having hordes of supporting cast.

Consequently Tyler's crew are reduced to hollering, whooping brutish stereotypes whose character depth is shallower than a puddle. Equally Kate's cohorts are boiled down to the basics with only Ramos being afforded a degree of humanity.  

Add in Macguffin babble over how to tame storms, scenes of rockets being fired up funnels and some dialogue as corny as what would be in the Midwest fields the chasers plough through, Minari director Chung's film has its sights set more on the brain at the door crowd looking for popcorn entertainment than much else.

But giving the leads long scenes where they mope sucks the air out of the spectacle and occasionally leaves you wishing they could be just sucked away in a vortex . Yet somehow, they're just likeable enough to get away with it - from Jones' grounded stoic grief to Powell's star wattage charisma, the old adage that likeable leads can paper over anything proves to be true here.

More confined to the side, the Twister FX noticeably benefit from an upgrade compared to some 30 years ago but the temptation to include firenadoes proves too strong to resist here, as the spectacle tries tp up itself.

Ultimately Twisters is an old school disaster movie that doesn't have quite enough disaster to propel it through its 2 hour run time. It lacks a big set piece or showboating moment, preferring instead to offer up a series of well-choreographed, well-executed moments that are shrouded in sound and bluster.

The story is far more effective in showing the devastation on communities, the quieter moments on lives ripped apart (as well as the stupidity of those ignoring advice during disaster) but for a simple tentpole movie blockbuster, it does exactly what it says on the tin - and nothing more.