Seen That? Watch This is a semi-regular column from critic Luke Buckmaster, taking a new release and matching it to comparable works. This week, he makes the case that The Hurricane Heist is a better, wilder action movie than Twisters.
Nothing screams “atmospheric intensity” like a good old fashioned extreme weather event. Lee Isaac Chung’s ante-upping spectacle Twisters follows on from the classic 90s blockbuster Twister, transforming the title from singular to plural in the spirit of “more, bigger, louder.” This belated sequel feels more like a remake, introducing a new lead in Daisy Edgar-Jones’ meteorologist Kate Carter, who we first meet in a field during a brief moment of quietude: the calm before the storm.
We know some rather inclement weather is a-coming, partly because of the grey skyline and partly because this film is called Twisters. Soon Chung is pounding the frame with watery carnage, debris flying every which-way as Kate and her team of storm chasing colleagues—including Anthony Ramos’ Javi—launch a daring mission to try to tame those nasty old tornadoes. It doesn’t go to plan: they end up tossed around like shreds of lettuce in front of an industrial fan.
It’s clear Chung is following a Hollywood formula, machine-tooled to deliver a tragic prologue (everybody other than Kate and Javi are killed) leading into a “reluctant hero rises to the challenge” narrative. Jumping ahead in time, Kate, now working for a tornado radar company, is approached by Javi for another daring mission, again with the rather ambitious aim of trying to solve this whole silly twister problem once and for all.
Javi does that very Hollywood thing, using everyday items as props to illustrate his plan—stirring water in a glass to simulate a tornado, and using small packets of butter to represent cameras that capture three dimensional scans. The resulting sequel/remake/remakequel never makes any big missteps nor takes interesting risks; it’s passable entertainment that lacks flair.
One thing I did appreciate was cinematographer Dan Mindel’s earthy colour scheme, styled to reflect the environmental conditions necessary for the titular events—as if the film itself exists in the path of a tornado. This worn-in aesthetic reminded me of 2018’s under-rated The Hurricane Heist, a superior action spectacle with obvious similarities, also capturing the kind of grim weather for which gumboots and umbrellas simply won’t cut it. If you think Twisters is intense, this film really steps on the gas, director Rob Cohen imbuing it with a violently restless energy.
The Hurricane Heist
To say The Hurricane Heist begins like a bat out of hell is an under-statement. Maybe it’s better to say it begins with a twist of hell itself, replete with vision of a screeching demon formed in the clouds. Like in Twisters, its visceral prologue includes a death that casts a pall over the characters’ lives, ticking the box marked “emotional backstory.” Young brothers Will (Leonardo Dickens) and Breeze (Patrick McAuley) are in a truck with their dad, caught in a ferocious storm, forced to seek refuge in a creaky old house soon crushed like a paper cup. As is the old man, who’s killed in the carnage.
The aforementioned demon-like figure, which a terrorized Will observes when he looks up into the sky, isn’t intended to be literal; this film has no supernatural elements. It’s a visual representation of his worst fears coming to life and of course the sheer bloody menace of a hurricane. It’s not subtle but it’s certainly audacious, and treats seriously the idea of the frame as a psychological canvas projecting not just the external realities of the characters but their subjective states of mind.
Again like Twisters, the story jumps forward many years, to a now-adult, meteorologist Will (Toby Kebbell) informing Breeze (Ryan Kwanten) that a hurricane about to arrive that’ll be worse than the one that killed poor old dad. Instead of the story making a point about willingly confronting your fears (like Twisters) screenwriters Scott Windhauser and Jeff Dixon opt for a message about being unable to escape your past—particularly formative influences.
While the storm’s brewing, a bunch of elite thieves orchestrate a long-planned robbery that uses the natural disaster to their advantage, attempting to pilfer hundreds of millions of dollars from the Treasury. Breeze, a maintenance worker, is taken hostage and Will vows to rescue him, accompanied by Treasury agent Casey Corbyn (Maggie Grace), who the robbers need to open the vault. Like in zombie movies, humans with competing agendas occupy the dramatic foreground, while in the background there’s broader society-upheaving challenges that are survivable but not defeatable.
I found this a more interesting kind of narrative layering than a tornado that exists, in terms of dramatic purpose, largely for the characters to chase. The staging of a heist during the hurricane also makes a bleak point about vulture-like aspects of the human condition: how in the worst of times people may choose not to help their fellow humans but to exploit them—although of course that’s not to say the bad guys get away with it.
The film retains some formulaic elements, but it’s far less “Hollywood” than Twisters: a bolder, meaner and wilder disaster movie, hissing and spitting like a demon in the clouds.
