17/07/24

Cineworld, Edinburgh

If ever I were asked to compile a list of the least eagerly anticipated movie sequels, Twisters would figure fairly high on it. After all, though Jan De Bont’s original was a commercial hit back in 1996, it has receded from public consciousness. The only image I can recall from it is a sequence featuring an airborne cow. But Lee Isaac Chung’s sequel has been co-financed by no less than three big studios and is executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, so clearly somebody has high expectations of it.

Twisters stars Daisy Edgar Jones as Kate Carter, an impetuous young meteorologist with the uncanny ability to ‘sniff out’ tornadoes before they actually happen. (Yes, really.) Along with boyfriend Jeb (Daryl McCormack) and a bunch of enthusiastic friends, including Javi (Anthony Ramos), she drives around Oklahoma in a ramshackle truck, chasing twisters – not for kicks, but to collect data for her PhD project.

Which is all great fun, until something bad happens.

Five years later, she’s working in an office in New York, wearing a sensible suit and being very risk averse. She’s approached by Javi, who has recently been in the military and now has access to some state-of-the-art tech which will allow him to capture tornado data as it’s never been done before. Would Kate like to spend a week with him, helping him reap the whirlwind? Pretty soon, she’s back in action and running with a whole crowd of action-seekers, including Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a redneck heartthrob with a huge online following and T-shirt sales to go with it. As he is fond of saying, “You don’t chase your dreams, you ride them.” Inevitably Kate and Glen find themselves bumping up against each other and, equally inevitably, sparks begin to fly…

Essentially, Twisters is a big-budget action romp, with a massive special effects budget, some eye-popping cinematography courtesy of Dan Mindel and, if I’m honest, not a great deal else. It’s a series of thrills and spills, featuring people who survive and others who do not. Every so often characters mumble stuff about the different chemicals that they’re pumping into the tornadoes in an apparent attempt to er… snuff them out? At least, I think that’s what they’re trying to do. I’m not sure how much scrutiny the technical side of this film can withstand.

Really, it’s just an excuse to throw people into a series of action set-pieces and make an audience worry about what’s going to happen to them. Since the unfortunate victims who lose the gamble are whisked away in an instant, there’s are no horribly mangled corpses to bother the 12A certificate. And, unlike its predecessor, Twisters does at least have the honesty to address the destructive nature of storms. Yes, there’s the occasional grudging references to global warming and climate catastrophe, but it all feels a little disingenuous.

There’s also a ‘will they won’t they?’ question overhanging Kate and Tyler throughout proceedings but, rather like those storm-related deaths, it’s all kept offscreen. Nothing to frighten the horses.

Don’t get me wrong, this all makes for an entertaining couple of hours in the cinema, but when you consider that Lee Isaac Chung’s last film was the brilliant and heartwarming Minari, it’s hard to get too excited about a summer blockbuster, which is full of sound and fury and… well, you know the rest.

3.2 stars

Philip Caveney