Review: 'Twisters' delivers unexpected tenderness when the world is ready to explode
Don't mess with Mother Nature.
All you have to do is watch the news to see the unprecedented damage that violent tornadoes are doing this year. In May alone, at least one tornado occurred somewhere in the United States on an almost daily basis. The lesson? Don't mess with Mother Nature.
Which of course is exactly what a group of fictional storm chasers is doing in "Twisters," a kind of multiplex mirror to "Twister," the 1996 blockbuster in which Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton tried to tame a tornado through science. Even minus Hunt and Paxton, who died in 2017, "Twisters" still gives science a leading role in the form of a computer data apparatus called Dorothy.
A new generation of weather daredevils is represented by Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate Cooper, a scientist who has deserted fieldwork since three of her colleagues, including her lover, were killed in the Oklahoma Tornado Alley rampage that opens the film.
Five years later, a traumatized Kate has to be shamed back into action by her colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos) to prove that radar can track and neutralize twisters. Edgar-Jones, a gifted British actress, can recede on screen, as she did in the botched "Where the Crawdads Sing." Now she's up against twister fireworks that are spectacular in every sense of the word.
Who can compete with that? Try livewire Glen Powell, the "Hit Man" hottie who stirs things up as Tyler Owens, a rhinestone cowboy out of Arkansas who turns his rodeo success into YouTube influencer stardom, practically daring these twisters to lay him flat.
Sadly, the only thing laying flat here is the Mark L. Smith script, which gives the actors little to work with at first. Hunt and Paxton had even less in the first "Twister," which devolved into screwball farce to cut the terror with titters and romcom retreads.
The saving grace for "Twisters," besides the twisters themselves, which are scarily breathtaking, is filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung, who won Oscar nominations for directing and writing 2020's "Minari," a lovely, semi-autobiographical tale and best picture Oscar nominee about a South Korean family that immigrates to rural Arkansas during the 1980s.
Chung doesn't go for obvious laughs in "Twisters," instead encouraging Edgar-Jones and Powell to build a scrappy sense of play between Kate and Tyler that allows their relationship to grow organically. What could have been forced and off-putting emerges as freshly endearing in ways that give us a rooting interest in how their romance develops or doesn't.
Better yet, Chung raises the bar on action escapism by letting the people and the land in the path of destruction ground the film in a reality that no special effects can match.
Suddenly, storms exist as a force of nature instead of Hollywood trickery. Lives of human beings are at stake, giving Powell and Edgar-Jones real characters to play, who must face real consequences when twisters threaten to destroy them and the very ground they stand on.
There's genuine terror now over the fate of the characters on both Team Kate and Team Tyler. And wouldn't you know that Kate and her cowboy aren't really all that different where it counts. Only future Superman David Corenswet merits boos and hisses playing an empty corporate suit ready to profit no matter who lives or dies.
Near the end, when a twister rips through the screen in a local movie house, Chung hints at the fragility and healing power of art. Too much? Maybe. You can always just ignore the nuance and enjoy the digital fireworks. You don't expect tenderness with the world ready to explode, but that's exactly what Chung delivers. And it makes all the difference.
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