FAIR WEATHER FARE

 

MOVIE
Twisters
Director Lee Isaac Chung
Reviewer Ray Chan

The original version of Twister spiralled across the screens almost three decades ago, a surprise disaster hit replete with flying cows.
    Reviving it for current audiences may seem like throwing caution to the wind, pun intended, even if the reiteration understandably comes with better effects. But is it a better story? Well, the title is plural for a start, indicating the audience is in for more than just one mammoth blast of air.
    Five years after the tragic death of three of her friends during a tornado-tracking experiment in Oklahoma, we hone in on weather expert Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones), now content with a desk job at the geomagnetic storm watcher agency NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
    However, when Javi (Anthony Ramos), the only other survivor of the initial accident, asks her to lend her talents to his new twister-hunting endeavour, she finds the lure hard to turn down.
    And so off they go down the winding track, pun intended again, where they come up against a rival pursuit team headed by former rodeo cowboy-turned meteorologist and YouTube sensation Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), who immediately pushes all the wrong buttons with his arrogant, roughshod demeanour. 
    This thread is reminiscent of the original movie, where there were two rival chase teams, and two competing leaders with barely muffled romantic attraction. But they also share largely ridiculous weather science, particularly when Kate and Tyler try to refine one of the former’s old high school projects in the hope of accurately controlling the whirlwinds, which seem to occur pretty frequently.
    As they try to corral another tornado, they find out that it's going to hit the town of El Reno, resulting in a rescue job to evacuate residents. Things then happen quickly: amid general destruction and chaos, Tyler’s leg is trapped by debris from a crashed train, but Kate and Javi rescue him. Tyler then saves Kate after she gets overturned in a truck.
    Interestingly, there is no mention of climate change, which one might expect would have been used in any sort of moral exposition to explain the growing phenomena.
    But perhaps director Lee Isaac Chung deliberately refrained from a sledgehammer approach and doesn’t want to state the obvious: that our planet is on fire, and everything from hurricanes to wildfires to tornadic outbreaks are getting worse. That's why Twisters ends with a facile suggestion that new technology can somehow mitigate these disasters.
    All in all, there is a stronger sense of humour and fun in the movie that makes it a lot less stodgy then the original. The chemistry between Powell and Edgar-Jones is solid, and keep a lookout for new Superman actor David Corenswet, who plays a member of Tyler’s twister troop.

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