Once More into the Breach
It’s not going to blow anyone away but ‘Twisters’ is an engaging enough Lifetime diversion. Plus Glen Powell in a wet T-shirt.
Twisters
Director: Lee Isaac Chung • Writer: Mark L Smith
Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane
USA • 2hrs 2mins
Opens Hong Kong July 17 • IIA
Grade: B
I’m just going to say it, no matter how inappropriate. If Glen Powell ever tipped his giant Stetson at me I’d be dropping trou in approximately 2.7 nanoseconds. He has just that much screen charisma, and it’s why he’s the star of director Lee Isaac Chung’s (!) Twisters. The story ostensibly belongs to Daisy Edgar-Jones, who seemed to be having a moment there a couple of years back. It felt like she’d been anointed the Next Big Thing, and everyone expected her star to rocket after that movie about the girl in the swamp, but she just never happened. At least she had Twisters to look forward to, right? Unfortunately, in the interim, Powell came out of literally nowhere to become The It Boy everyone’s talking about. It’s been a while since a bland, hunky, all-American type white guy has hit with Powell’s kind of wattage; guy totally crushes that Stetson. Poor Daisy.
And you can tell she’s the main character because the unnecessary sequel to Jan de Bont’s early CGI-practical hybrid Twister is, at heart, a textbook Lifetime movie. Seriously. Check it: A pretty professional woman in the big city lives with some kind of personal trauma, probably involving a dead fiancé or some such. She returns to her small, heartland hometown and meets a hunky, salt-of-the-earth type who helps her rediscover her purpose and heal that broken heart. The difference between Twisters and any Lifetime hokum is budget. And tremendous VFX. And A-list actors. And a highly skilled director. All of which come down to budget.
Tornado pimp
Chung becomes the latest art house maestro to step behind the camera of a monster summer franchise (one that is suddenly poised to be one of the year’s biggest hits if Powell’s star power is as robust as we think it is) and unlike Chloe Zhao (Eternals) – whose aesthetic and sentiment clanged with Marvel – the affinity Chung showed for rural America and its Americana Minari does Twisters a service. Chung shoots his wheat fields with a sense of respectful foreboding, of imminent loss, and it lends the otherwise hollow actioner a modicum of emotional heft. For whatever reason, producers Amblin and Warner decided they didn’t want to pick up a story original star Helen Hunt allegedly pitched years ago (in Warner’s case it was probably because they hate talent) so writer Mark L Smith (The Revenant, Overlord) honours the original film by duplicating its beats and structure – and tossing in a whole mess of hilarious faux science (I always keep my polymers in the barn).
Five years after Oklahoma grad student Kate Cooper (Edgar-Jones) and her lab partner Javi (Anthony Ramos) have a fatal run-in with a twister while testing a method for dissipating storms, she’s living in New York, working for the city’s meteorology centre. When Javi convinces her to come home and help him test a 3D tornado live modelling (?!) system, she reluctantly agrees. Sound familiar? He has investors, shiny trucks, uniforms and a crew of MIT/NASA/FEMA/Harvard types managed by Scott the Asshole (new Superman David Corenswet, Pearl). On their first stop they run into tornado cowboy Tyler Owens (Powell) and his good-hearted ragtag crew with second hand clothes and broken down RVs: videographer Boone (Brandon Perea, Nope), drone operator Lilly (Sasha Lane, American Honey), weather techies Dani and Dexter (Love Lies Bleeding’s Katy O'Brian and Tunde Adebimpe). After some obnoxious “Woooh!” howls primed for Solo cup lifting the gang reveals it’s In It For The Right Reasons. They’re here to save lives and help out in the aftermath if they can’t. Tyler turns on the charm. Kate brushes him off. Javi frets. Go.
Twister was a straight-ahead climate thriller anchored on a wounded woman searching for redemption, with a modest love triangle side story. Twisters is exactly the same thing, with less Bill Paxton (RIP), forced conflict (the two crews are doing different jobs) and a wounded woman that makes the milquetoast Hunt look edgy. Smith’s script doesn’t help, but Edgar-Jones almost sucks the life out of every scene she’s in – and she’s in almost all of them. She’s not as understandable as Hunt’s Jo Harding, and the acceptance of her by Owens’ crew is baffling. That could be because the thinly sketched characters barely register; there’s no level-headed, urbane Jami Gertz to pull for, or wacky (in the right way) Philip Seymour Hoffman techie to worry about. The strong supporting cast does its best, but Powell steamrolls everyone except Maura Tierney as Kate’s mother Cathy (are women in Oklahoma only variations Catherine?). Over a lunch scene Tierney and Powell display some genuine chemistry and prove way more fun to watch than Edgar-Jones and Powell. I don’t think we’re supposed to want him getting together with her mom.
It’s been 28 years since the first film, so Twisters takes a stab at commenting on issues that have popped up in the interim. Smith and Chung take aim at the corporate opportunism that prioritises shareholder dividends over human lives, the commercialisation of science and, finally, climate change. Cathy makes a brief crack about storms getting worse, and storm season getting longer, but that’s the extent of it. That’s fine. We’re here to see tornadoes wreaking havoc, and those 28 years were good to the VFX. And they don’t distract from Powell’s… wet Stetson. — DEK