Storm in the Heartland

I don’t think I’m as much of a film snob as I’m supposed to be. Don’t get me wrong, I love a complicated and mind-bending independent film that melts my brain and inspires me to write 1,000 words on the cinematic language of the New Hollywood movement, but I equally love a good disaster movie or something coated wall to wall with explosions and car chases. One of my most indelible memories is going to the movies when I was 16 and seeing “Twister” and getting drunk on the possibilities of blockbuster destruction.

Almost 30 years later, we’re finally getting a sequel to “Twister,” even though we sadly don’t have Bill Paxton or Philip Seymour Hoffman here anymore to reprise their roles. In fact, “Twisters” doesn’t really connect to the original at all except for a few minor easter eggs, leading me to in fact decide that the film is not a sequel at all, but instead a reboot or remake or rebootquel…I really have no idea.

Director Lee Isaac Chung (whose 2020 film “Minari” is absolutely sublime) would at first seem like a strange choice for the director of an action-packed disaster movie, but his choice was an inspired one. He casts the movie perfectly with an amazing blend of movie stars and character actors, while servicing a script that spends just as much time building compelling characters as it does reveling in sweet tornado destruction.

Good looking people saving us from nature, one tornado at a time. Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros

Look at this cast: we’ve got Daisy Edgar-Jones starring, who was wonderful in 2022’s “Fresh,” but still hasn’t had her breakout role quite yet. Opposite Edgar-Jones is newly minted movie star Glen Powell, who has quickly become Hollywood’s newest leading man due to his charisma, talent and matinee-idol good looks. Also, he was so great in Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man.” Five years from now it wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.

But it’s the supporting cast that’s truly amazing. We’ve got Anthony Ramos (who originated dual roles in “Hamilton” on Broadway), the great Maura Tierney, iconic indie darling Sasha Lane, “Mad Men’s” Kiernan Shipka, next year’s new Superman David Corenswet, breakout star Katy O’Brian from the queer cult classic “Love Lies Bleeding” and freaking Tunde Adebimpe from the legendary band, TV on the Radio. Even if the movie was terrible, spending time with these performers would make it worth watching.

Luckily though, “Twisters” isn’t terrible. In fact, it’s fun in a way that disaster movies forget to be sometimes. All of the horrific destruction needs to be balanced with a deftly humanist touch or else the film is wallowing in tragedy in such a way that people don’t really want from their popcorn blockbusters. Instead, the film feels like a throwback to a time when as long as a movie was exciting and had characters we liked spending time with, then that could be good enough.

Honestly, the original “Twister” is more successful as an action movie because so much of the destruction was done practically with giant sets and tons of stunt people. Special effects have come so far that most of the action sequences in “Twisters” feel computer generated, which doesn’t give the film the same level of visceral and tactile intensity as the original. There’s nothing as jaw-dropping in the new one as when Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were outracing a tornado in 1996 and a house landed in front of them that they had to drive through! Watching “Twister” felt like seeing something crazy and exciting for the first time. Watching “Twisters” is just like seeing more of the same kind of destruction we’ve been seeing in movies for years.

Also, “Twisters” is very much aimed at a demographic that I don’t fit inside. The whole soundtrack and score is made up of modern country music, and a lot of the dialogue is focused on how soft and rude city people are and how brave country people are. As someone who grew up on farms and ranches in small towns until I was 18…there are good and bad people everywhere and it makes no difference the size of the town you come from. At points, I felt like “Twisters” was trying to be the cinematic equivalent of Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.” It’s up to you whether that’s a bug or a feature.

I still enjoyed “Twisters” for what it is, even when it felt like it wasn’t for me. Anything with that much cinematic destruction in service of well-drawn characters and charismatic performances is fun in my book. But sometimes my book is just drawn by 12-year-old Jared and filled with pictures of tornadoes, flying cows and gleefully, over-the-top wreckage. Maybe I’m a bad film snob. Or maybe sometimes it’s OK to just be entertained…nothing more and, hopefully, nothing less.

Twister

Dir. Lee Isaac Chung

Grade: C

Now playing at Regal Old Mill,
Sisters Movie House, Odem Theater Pub

This article appears in Source Weekly July 25, 2024.