Glen Powell is becoming a Hollywood force of nature. I can count at least three films that have had his name on them in the last six months, and that includes Twisters. This is not necessarily a bad thing; I like the work he chooses to attach himself to, and I have gotten feedback from those who have met him that he is one of the nicest guys around. He even puts his parents in his films, which makes their stunt on the red carpet for Anyone But You that much more endearing (look it up).
Twisters is hard to pin down because it’s not really a remake or a sequel. It’s been almost two decades since the first film took audiences on a wild ride through one of natures most unpredictable and dangerous forces, and this go ‘round (no pun intended) features Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate, a woman living in New York as a professional meteorologist dealing with her past in Oklahoma after an experiment to try and control a tornado goes horribly wrong. Another member of that experiment in Javi (Anthony Ramos) shows up and asks her to come back home to help him work with new technology that can help them predict where tornadoes will happen so they can save lives. She agrees to give Javi a week, and in doing so ends up meeting with a group of “tornado wranglers” that stream their escapades live on YouTube led by Tyler Owens (Powell). As they compete to be the ones to get to the scenes, motivations are revealed while Kate is forced to face the very thing that made her leave Oklahoma five years before.
Lee Isaac Chung takes over the director’s chair here and has really big shoes to fill following Jan De Bont, but he does so quite well. He takes the premises of the first film and really does expand enough that it doesn’t feel like a re-hash or sequel while also having enough homage to respect what Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt did before him. Twisters DOES start out a bit rough as it sets up Kate’s backstory with some acting that leaves much to be desired, but luckily it gets better as the story progresses. The technology and effects here are top-notch (to be expected when you also have Steven Spielberg involved as an executive producer), and a showing of this in IMAX or Dolby Cinema is something I may look into for that reason alone, both visually AND sonically.
There really isn’t much to say on the performances here as this is more about the visuals, but the cast is serviceable. There have been some past concerns about Powell in the more dramatic moments, but he understands the character of Owens well and translates it in a way that kept me invested throughout in a script that is well paced and a soundtrack that I am very interested in owning.
Twisters is truly a summer kind of movie, and while it will probably wind up in the middle of the pack for me when 2024 is all said and done, I would still recommend it for a mindless good time at the theater. In the end, isn’t that all we want sometimes?
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