'Twisters' Review: Glen Powell Wrangles a Tornado of Summer Action

Revisiting the 1996 feature Twisters is a time capsule, for sure. Outside of seeing Todd Field before he was an Oscar-nominated director, it illustrates exactly what audiences were looking for in the mid-’90s: a great throwback to the disaster films of the 1970s with a dependable cast that never overstayed its welcome. There was also a vastly different relationship to the environment then but let’s not get into it. All of that is to say that watching the film’s sequel/quasi-remake Twisters is to see it reflect the world we’re living in today, for good and ill.

Twenty-six years later director Lee Isaac Chung presents audiences with another group of intrepid young tornado chases, albeit this time their goal is blending the worlds of science and entertainment on-screen in a way that can come off as overly earnest but never fake. Much of this comes from everyone’s favorite actor, Glen Powell, who showcases that he is the most magnetic presence in a room. When Twisters is about him, and the hot tornado action of seeing it on a big screen, it’s a winner.

Much like its predecessor we meet our heroine, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) right as tragedy hits. Kate wants to find a way to collapse tornadoes before they do any damage and in the process of trying an experiment she loses three friends. Five years later Kate teams up with a former colleague (Anthony Ramos) and the two embark on storm-chasing. Add in a “tornado wrangler” named Tyler Owens (Powell) and the group takes on the task of trying to stop tornadoes once and for all.

The opening tragedy sets the tone for how all the tornado scenes play out: reliant on sound and the majesty of Mother Nature’s wrath to evoke awe in the theater and it works! There’s something about the way cinematographer Dan Mindel — who worked on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the third Mission: Impossible — captures the conflict between people trapped in terrifying situations that is emotionally resonant. A scene of Kate, Tyler, a mother and her child in a large below ground swimming pool as the twister roars above them is awe-inspiring in how the camera focuses on their individual looks of terror.

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Edgar-Jones is meant to be our Helen Hunt equivalent, a once idealistic scientist who questions herself after she unintentionally gets people she loves killed. She has all the benchmarks of Hunt’s character, right down to a sequence where she wears an outfit similar to Hunt, but there is a spark missing. This is probably because it takes nearly an hour for Edgar-Jones and Powell to team up. Separately, Edgar-Jones’ Kate is dour and contemplative, wracked with guilt and more single-minded in her goal to help people, or at least her best friend Javi. Her and Ramos are nice together, but because their characters are reminders of the opening accident they have little spark.

The true star of Twisters, outside of the eponymous acts of God, is Glen Powell and it’s weird that he isn’t introduced until the first 20(ish) minutes of the movie once Kate is introduced, vetted and brought to Oklahoma to work with Javi’s team, Storm Par. Tyler and his group of storm chasers are introduced “hillbillies with a YouTube channel” until they’re discovered to be a ragtag group of philanthropists who have found success via social media. It would have been interesting to play at that dichotomy: of government funding vs. influencer culture similar to how the original film parlayed independent storm chasing with private funding but that doesn’t hit as hard here.

Instead, Kate and Tyler fall into a “will they or won’t they” dynamic, with the two razzing each other about basic things; she’s the “city girl” and he’s secretly intelligent. Thankfully, Powell’s effortless charm overcomes a lot of filmic sins and he and Edgar-Jones do liven things up significantly. It’s just unfortunate that it takes over an hour for them to actually unify, much like twin twisters coming together!

The cast is fairly packed with faces you’ll recognize: the aforementioned Anthony Ramos, Katy O’Brian (from Love Lies Bleeding), Sasha Lane, Kiernan Shipka, a pre-Superman David Corenswet, Maura Tierney. They’re all great to see but there’s little room for anyone to make an impact like the ensemble behind Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton in the original film. Ramos probably has the biggest arc of the group and that’s more a half-hearted “trying to do right to get over my guilt” plot. The rest of the team only have a few lines. They all come together in a fairly pulse-pounding sequence in a movie theater — another callback to the original film — that’s, again, visually intense to watch.

Let’s be real, the quest Kate and her friends are embarking on regarding collapsing tornadoes is about on par with Helen Hunt’s Jo believing all tornadoes were personally out to get her. If anything, the film’s emphasis and interest in science is unique to see. It just makes it more frustrating how the script deftly avoids using the word “climate change” throughout the 2 hour runtime, content to keep talking about an “unprecedented” rise in tornado activity in Oklahoma. No doubt much of this stems from the home of not alienating a Midwest or Southern audience.

Twisters is far from the best thing you’ll see this year, but it is the best thing you’ll see in a movie theater! Disaster movies will always fill an itch for an audience that wants chaos on the big screen (and, weirdly enough, in a fantasy world that can be found in a movie theater). Glen Powell continues to showcase his strengths and he is a serious high point for the movie.

Twisters is in theaters July 19.

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