Nearly 30 years after its release, TWISTER is still an absolute blast in all the right, thrilling "perfect summer movie" ways.
With Steven Spielberg producing and Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, Westworld, Coma) penning the screenplay, we all knew that it would be a great ride.
Tornado chasers Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) and his wife Jo (Helen Hunt) have all but signed the papers on their impending divorce. Bill shows up in the middle of tornado alley to get Jo to finally sign the papers. He's got his new fiance, Melissa (the winning Jami Gertz) along with him in his shiny new truck. The odds of either emerging spotless by the end of the movie are VERY low.
Their marital storm is put on hold when an epic series of tornadoes hits Oklahoma and Bill can't resist taking part in efforts to launch a new mapping technology inside one of the historic F5 tornadoes.
Bill and Jo's crew is loaded with characters and great actors, including a young Philip Seymour Hoffman (A Most Wanted Man, Magnolia) and Alan Ruck (Ferris Bueller's Day Off).
Cary Elwes rounds out the cast as a competitive tornado chaser with more balls than brains. The two crews battling to he in the right place and the right times leads to plenty of laughs.
Director Jan de Bont (Speed, The Haunting) knows how to shoot action and creates some of the best storm action sequences in film history. They've become classics.
For anyone that's done the Twister "Ride It Out" experience" at Universal Orlando (see video below) you've had the chance to be there for several of the film's best sequences, including "another cow!" and the harrowing drive-in scene.
Fast, fun and scary, the film's terrific surround sound mix holds up really well, putting you right in the middle of the howling super storms.
I'm a Helen Hunt fan, but she's saddled with an unlikable role here. Her relentless death wish surfaces so many times that eye rolls kicked in for me, but just when the human drama gets a bit goofy, de Bont, Crichton and Spielberg whip up another massive tornado to drop your jaw and one-up the thrills.
It's a damn near perfect brainless summer movie and one of the last films to use plenty of practical special effects alongside CGI. Shortly after the release of the film, the majority of productions moved to all computer generated effects.
If you haven't seen TWISTER in awhile, check it out. Turn off the lights, crank up the surround and hold on to something. This one still blows you away and earns an A-.
A new film TWISTERS has been announced for 2024. Let's see if we're still talking about it in three decades!
"I gotta go, Julia. We got cows...."
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