Kinetic.

That’s probably the best way to summarize Twister, a film that feels more like a thrill ride than a motion picture. Indeed, the picture is more concerned with creating a visceral response from its audience than it telling a truly artful or emotionally compelling tale. And it works. The dialogue is hokey. The characters are cliché and silly. And juvenile. The plot is preposterously implausible. But the whole damn thing works because it throws you in the midst of a natural phenomenon that very few of us have ever seen – let alone up close. And Twister gets you up close and personal with the star of the film: The tornadoes that seemingly haunt the land, appearing and disappearing like malevolent specters.

And despite the constant whirlwind, the film almost never lets you catch your breath.

Essentially, this is the story of how a dysfunctional group of storm chasers manage to track down a tornado in order to deploy a bunch of sensors to study the internal structure of these monsters of nature. Of course, locating a tornado is easier said than done. And getting yourself in its path of destruction long enough to place your scientific monitors – but not long enough to get the Wizard-of-Oz treatment – is even more difficult. It’s just that, in this film, our storm chasers seem to be magnets for twisters and manage to become entangled with nearly a half-dozen of them during the course of the film.

In truth, the frequency with which the storm chasers meet up with tornadoes defies plausibility but the unabashed bravado of the film almost entirely compensates for this. It’s as if meeting up with the tornadoes is so much fun for the audience that it simply doesn’t matter that such a bizarre series of occurrences could never happen in the real world.

The same could be said of the characters themselves. Bill (Bill Paxton) and Jo (Helen Hunt) are on the verge of getting divorced but come together again, despite the fact that Bill’s fiancé Melissa (Jami Gertz) is along for the ride. I don’t even think daytime Soap would attempt such a silly scenario – but much like the questionable science, the questionable characters are easily overshadowed by the action. More interesting is the supporting cast, with performances from the likes of Cary Elwes, Alan Ruck, Jeremy Davies, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

But really, the main attractions here are the tornadoes and the combination of digital sight and sound works wonders.  From start to finish, the twisters look real, plausible — and oftentimes deadly.  The sound effects might be a bit hokey by way of the added growls and roars.  But the effect is real.  And in the end, the tornadoes come across a bit like the Great White Shark in Jaws (though, no one will confuse Twister for Jaws, it’s clear that this is a kind of sideways homage).

In the end, the heroes manage to find a monster tornado (an F5 for you twister fanatics), they manage to place their sensors and much scientific data studies will no doubt ensue.

And only then do you really get to catch your breath.

Overall Grade: B

Really, though, there’s only one reason to see Twister: the tornadoes themselves. And just about everything with respect to the twisters works quite well, from the CGI to the growling sound effects to the pacing and framing of the film itself. Twister is a thrill ride, one that can be enjoyed – so long as you’re not expecting anything deep or meaningful.

Topics: Action, Film Review, Sci-Fi
Filed under: Film

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