Twisters | Review | The Film Blog

★★

If the pervading memory of Jan de Bont’s 1996 block-fluster Twister is an image of bovine aeronautics, it’s hard to picture how its instantly less iconic 2024 sequel, from Minari director Lee Isaac Chung, will be remembered. Perhaps only in retrospectives examining Glen Powell’s sharp rise to megastardom. Two decades of graft lie behind the chiselled Texan’s supposed overnight success. Having made his debut in 2003’s third Spy Kids flick, Powell has successfully bit-parted his way through all from The Dark Knight Rises to Expendables 3. The winds changed with Top Gun: Maverick and Anyone But You but now they’re very much stormin’ high.

Powell is one among a small cluster of saving graces in Twisters, a pluralised sequel in every sense. He plays tornado-wrangling ‘science cowboy,’ Tyler Owens, a hillbilly with a one million plus YouTube following and merchandise to shift. And yet, perhaps there’s more to the perfect smile and charisma that meets the eye. Maybe, behind the casual disregard for his own safety, this beefcake knows a thing or two about meteorology. Vulnerability feels a winning niche for Powell, with fallibilities played up just enough but never so far as to undercut the action hero image. No one ever called Tom Cruise ‘hot girl fit’. It works for Powell.

Primed to expose Tyler’s soft centre is Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Kate Carter, a beautiful mind not so far removed from the star’s last, and only other major to date, film role in Where the Crawdads Sing. Much like Kya Clark, Kate dances the fine line between cool headed scientist and airy wind-whisperer. As with Kya, Kate walks a cruel world with trauma bubbling not so far beneath the surface. This is the memory of the film’s horror-tinged prologue and its best scenes. A young, naive Kate leads her young, naive friends into the heart of an EF5 tornado, buoyed the brilliance of her own research, only for each to be picked off by wind speeds of over 200mph. It’s devastating and all too morbidly watchable.

A leap to the future finds Kate carving a new life in the city as a New York meteorologist. It’s safer but less organically her. We know this because she looks miserable, even when outsmarting colleagues. The lure of Oklahoma is a strong one, however. Sure enough, it doesn’t take so much persuading from fellow survivor Javi (Anthony Ramos), another storm chaser turned white collar, to bring her back. Really, it’s the love for the land, the state’s vast expanses, that calls her but much is said of making a difference and saving lives. The tornados are getting stronger, deadlier and more prevalent. Kate’s genius is the missing piece in Javi’s team of gust-busters.

Setting aside the film’s good will credentials – much is made of charitable endeavour and community support – something feels amiss. In the face of changing weather patterns, not once does anyone reference climate change. It’s just accepted that twenty-eight years and an extra ‘s’ in the title makes for a more dangerous state of play. Moreover, Twisters pits science against experience in its narrative flow. Perhaps there is cause to be wary of a film that presents experts as being cold, disingenuous and driven by profiteering ulterior motives, against true, salt of the Earth, red-blooded American vigilantes.

Such might matter less, certainly to the average moviegoer, were the film more consistently engaging. Well executed storm sequences quicken the pulse in fits and bursts but Twisters lacks strength in its foundations. When the wind dies, the pace goes with it. As for Powell and Edgar-Jones, there’s a nice enough tête-à-tête frisson but it’s barely more compelling than the average Hallmark Christmas movie, with which the film shares its basic DNA – albeit with less gingerbread.