Twisters

★★★✩✩

Reviewed by John Nathan

I am a sucker for natural disasters in cinema. George Clooney’s Perfect Storm was one. Remember that tiny boat valiantly climbing a mountain of a wave? Then there was Twister in 1996 in which Helen Hunt joined storm chasers to create an advance weather alert system. Now there is a completely new take called Twisters (the plural) in which Daisy Edgar-Jones is meteorologist Kate who joins storm chasers in a bid to … oh, wait a minute. Not so completely new after all. Is it really the case that once you’ve seen one tornado you have seen them all?

You can imagine the Top Gun-style pitch. Instead of a picture of Tom Cruise in Ray-Bans standing in front of a fighter jet, there is Glen Powell as Tyler (coincidentally also one of Cruise’s fellow hotshot pilots in Top Gun: Maverick) standing in front of a tornado going “yee ha!” the way storm chasers do.

Kate is schlepping trauma from a previous encounter with a fatal twister. Tyler, meanwhile, turns out to have hidden depths. After a mutually insulting banter, they collaborate to make America’s plains safer for mankind while the tornados rock up with incredible regularity even for a superheated climate.

The spectacle doesn’t disappoint. However, narratively speaking director Lee Isaac Chung’s film is as memorable as a breeze.