By Geno McGahee
I finally got to see TWISTER. This was during that time of disaster movies like DANTE’S PEAK, VOLCANO, DEEP IMPACT, ARMAGEDDON and TITANIC. Hollywood was pumping them out and boy did they have fun with the CGI. In the 70s, there were movies like THE TOWERING INFERNO and they relied on good writing and practical effects. In the nineties, the writing wasn’t nearly as good and the CGI took over and was used A LOT throughout these films. Bill Paxton starred in both TWISTER and TITANIC and is really a fantastic actor. He is in a lot of good films and as much as I went into TWISTER thinking that it was going to be terrible, I actually enjoyed it.
We begin with young Jo Harding being awaked by her parents during a tornado. They run to the storm cellar as the twister comes down hard. Her father holds the door as the storm rips it off its hinges. The father is swooped up into the tornado and it was a hilarious visual. The poor guy was not that bright. The mother and daughter lived because they stood back in the cellar. He held onto the door even as it was being ripped off the hinges. That set the tone for the story. All grown up Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) is now a tornado chaser and wants to understand how they work. She doesn’t want another father to be swooped up into a twister.
Her old partner, Bill Harding (Bill Paxton), has returned to get the divorce papers from her and to introduce her to his soon to be new wife, Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz). The minute that Bill reunites with the group, he begins to fall back into the old routine of storm chasing. He leaves Melissa with his strange buddy, Dusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and reconnects with his estranged wife. Immediately, it’s obvious that Bill and Jo have a lot of love left and it doesn’t go unnoticed by Melissa. I figured that she would be swooped up into a tornado to get rid of her character and remove the problem, but amazingly, they did not. They didn’t take the easy way out.
Dorothy, a machine that analyzes tornado activity, was invented by Bill and produced by Jo, and is going to change the alert system for twisters. To put it into action, they have to get into the path of the twister and that leads to a lot of near death action sequences. On top of trying to survive the storms, they have to deal with rival storm chasers, led by Dr. Jonas Miller, played by Cary Elwes. It was strange to hear him with a southern accent. He seemed too proper but that may be his history with THE PRINCESS BRIDE. I’m not saying that you can’t be southern and proper, but the southern accent just didn’t fit Elwes. He did his best and did a good job. Maybe if I didn’t see him in anything else, I would have accepted this character more so.
The infighting between Bill and Jo is the story of this film. Bill still wants to chase tornados, but he wants to do it the safest way possible. He is also trying to change her way of thinking. Jo has assigned personalities to the tornados. She is trying to understand why they missed so many houses but sucked her father off, or out. I’m not sure which way to say it without it sounding like dirty.
Melissa survives multiple tornados and decides to leave and leave Bill behind too. This leaves Jo and Bill back together and tragedy and romance ensues. They finally get Dorothy into the twister and find love again.
TWISTER is a CGI-filled disaster film, but it’s loaded with a great cast. This could have easily been a made for TV sort of film, but they upped the ante with the actors and actresses involved and they did their best to sell it. Paxton and Hunt work well with each other and Hoffman, a tremendous actor, had fun with his role and proved entertaining throughout. I also liked Jami Gertz in this. She played up the prissy doctor very well. She was likeable but you still hoped she got lost. She was able to ride the fine line.
This film can’t be taken too seriously, but it is not as bad as many contend and I was led to believe. I recommend it. It was very fun.
Rating: 6.5/10
You’re right, Geno. This was a really good film. I have it in Blu-ray. As you said, the crux of the story was the relationship between Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. This is what made the movie.