Twisters; the gentle breezes who don’t know when to stop. This film is about those tempestuous temptresses and the human idiots who love them.
These modern day ‘wind whisperers’ travel to the tornado belt in middle America in the name of science, but they stay for the rush that almost being killed in cargo pants seems to provide.
Team Hunch – because of course there are teams – are lead by ‘nearly divorcees’ Jo (Helen Hunt) and Bill (Bill Paxton) and a group of irreverent kooky types, least of which is Philip Seymour Hoffman as the clichéd speed freak thrillseeker dick.
We are meant to love Team Hunch and their instinctive and carefree ways.
Team Science are well funded and lead by Miller (Cary Elwes) and his team of loser math guys, researchers and specialists.
Boo Team Science. Obviously…
Both teams drive recklessly toward any and every twister in their area, which if it is this many America would be a concave dustbowl full of debris. Bill has only rejoined his ex to get her to finalise the divorce proceedings with her signature, but he is sucked in by the chance to hurl a giant metal keg full of information gathering balls into the heart of a big wind. And who could blame him?
The film tries to play up the human angle. Bill is meant to be giving up chasing twisters to take on a TV weatherman job, even though he’s the guy who would cross the state to see a cow fart. He’s meant to be remarrying with a new more sensible woman, though she’s a fragile vase filled to the brim with tedium. We’re meant to think that Bill and Jo are meant to be together, though it’s far more obvious what Bill shouldn’t be doing than what he should.
Twisters might be enormous, dangerous and unpredictable, this film is anything but.
Nevertheless over the next couple hours Bill and Jo manage to nearly be killed on more than a few occasions, once avoiding certain death by hiding under a small wooden bridge, another by strapping themselves by a leather belt – all while the twisters flick barns, trucks and of course cows about like a heavyweight boxer throws groupies.
The twisters are well realised and do look especially breezy. It is amusing to see large inanimate objects churned high into the air like so many leaves, but most of the hot air here is emanating from the boneheads chasing the twisters about.
Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. At least Into the Storm arrived to make this film look better…
