Title: Twisters

Year: 2024

Country: USA

Language: English

Genre: Adventure, Action, Thriller

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Screenwriter: Mark L. Smith

Music: Benjamin Wallfisch

Cinematography: Dan Mindel

Editor: Terilyn A. Shropshire

Cast:

Daisy Edgar-Jones

Glen Powell

Anthony Ramos

Brandon Perea

David Corenswet

Harry Hadden-Paton

Sasha Lane

Tunde Adebimpe

Katy O'Brien

Maura Tierney

Daryl McCormack

Kiernan Shipka

Nik Dodani

Paul Scheer

Stephen Oyoung

Rating: 6.9/10

Following his Hollywood calling card MINARI (2020), Lee Issac Chung is at the helm of a veritable blockbuster. TWISTERS is an earnest disaster film revamping the formula of its predecessor with a 28-year gap, and acing it, though the barrier is really not that high as Jan de Bont’s TWIST (1996) is an empty egg shored up by a spectacular shell, e.g. its special effects.

The sheer puissance of tornadoes is effected spectacularly in TWISTERS. It is discernible that CGI is used restrainedly throughout. Like those scenes where people are sucked away by a tornado’s elemental force, or the seismic destruction when it runs amok in full swing. Most of the time, the cast is put under the wringer of water cannons and simulated downpours where camaraderie, altruistic deeds, individual heroics get the best of land-grabbing avarice and thrill-seeking frivolity.

In the dead center of the story is Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Kate, a young meteorologist returns to her home surf several years after a storm-chasing adventure goes deadly wrong. Braving herself to the bereavement and guilt that she has tried very hard to conceal ever since, Kate is recruited by Javi (Ramos), her erstwhile teammate, to join him on a new scientific project to scan and study tornadoes, but is more taken by Glen Powell’s Tyler, the charismatic leader of a rival team. A foe-to-friend, romance-tingling plot-line is down the road, but Lee’s film deftly evades to be mawkish and predictable. The visibly growing attraction between Kate and Tyler doesn’t culminate in an embrace and a passionate kiss, which is a repudiation of a time-honored cliche done in the most insouciant style, or a compliance to Generation Z’s reputed puritanism slant on sex, storm-chasing is far cooler than canoodling. Either way, it paves a further emotional attachment that could blossom in a possible sequel.

Inarguably, TWISTERS catapults Edgar-Jones to the stratosphere as a new Hollywood leading actress who is also an impeccable role model for millions to emulate. Her Kate is smart, instinctive, dauntless, emotionally relatable, approachable but also not too accessible, not to mention she humbles the entire sterner sex into onlookers while heading to a raging tornado to do what must be done. Powell is more cruising on his charms, a gentlemanlike listener and dishy encourager, voluntarily conceding the limelight to his leading lady and getting thunderstruck by her judgment and intrepidity.

While Hollywood still tries to promote Anthony Ramos to a leading man status, his third-billed Javi has no chance to contend for Kate’s heart with Powell strutting his stuff with an effortless panache. It is surprising to descry the upcoming new Superman Corenswet has a supporting role here as Javi’s unsympathetic business partner. Since Corenswet’s name is completely overlooked during the film’s massive public press, it only makes sense that his agency doesn’t want the film to exploit his new-found-but-untested fame prematurely. He is the one who can give Powell a run for his money, if a sequel dares to go that approach. Among other foils, Maura Tierney defies the odds as a wonderfully understanding parent as Kate’s self-reliant mother, not a passing complaint about her daughter’s self-erected estrangement, and knows exactly how to introduce a strange dreamboat to her daughter when he blows in at her doorstep.

All in all, under Lee’s sensible supervision, TWISTERS conscientiously dots the i’s and crosses the t’s to carry the torch of a conventional summer tent-pole and rings some changes to become more attuned to today’s ethos, it is a balancing act of undervalued delicacy and acumen, for this alone, the film has earned its stripes fair and square.

referential entries: Jan de Bont’s TWIST (1996, 5.2/10); Lee Isaac Chung’s MINARI (2020, 7.9/10).