REVIEW: TWISTERS

4/5

Twistin' The Night Away.

122 Mins: Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, David Corenswet, Maura Tierney & Sasha Lane. Screenplay: Mark L. Smith. Director: Lee Isaac Chung.

Bill Paxton would be proud of these storm chasers. The late, great actor and his 'Twister' movie with Helen Hunt and Cary Elwes set the tornado tone. All in the 'Daylight' of disaster movie's golden era, the 90s, when you even had two volcano movies in the same year ('Dante's Peak', and...erm...'Volcano') trying to out-erupt each other. Now the great genre of Hollywood is back in Tinseltown fashion. You only have to see the epic end of a fitting 'Frankenstein' finale, where a screen is ripped out to reveal mother nature at her most blockbuster building beauty, to realize that monster movies like this are here to stay, like the red seats of cinema. Much like the clever promotional billboards of 'Twisters', literally flung across towns across America. 'Armageddon' and 'Deep Impact' (which also came out in the same calendar, like an 'Olympus Has Fallen' and 'White House Down', a year after those volcano films). Expect epics like this to be brought back to the multiplex for the masses in Oklahoma City thunder and lightning. Very, very frightening.

'Twisters' does for all of these aforementioned real horrors what a 'Maverick' Tom Cruise did for 'Top Gun' and a corona crippled cinema a few years back (all from a story from director Joseph Kosinski too). And it's in part thanks to the pilot who stole the show in that movie, Glen Powell, honouring his late, great friend and 'Twister' forefather Bill Paxton (a lovely video of Paxton playing around in a house that looks and feels like 'Inception' hit it, recently went viral), after earning his spurs and Stetson with him on 'Red Wing'. Now flying on his own, and by the seat of his pants, the 'Top Gun: Maverick' Hangman is cheating death as a "Tornado Wrangler" in jeans and shirt the same. Setting off fireworks as a true maverick and cowboy storm chaser who will literally drill his pick-up truck into the hallowed earth before giving up the ghost on this wind that whirls like a phantom. This isn't his first, you know what. A charismatic, yet compelling YouTube sensation with even more smarts than hits, Powell powers this picture, even though it isn't the 'Hit Man' of the Summer and 'Anyone But You' and 'Devotion' star's own. Yee haw!

That honour goes to Daisy Edgar-Jones. The Sally Rooney 'Normal People' adaptation, H.G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds' and 'Where the Crawdaws Sing' star on the great actors blockbuster moment. Raging against tragedy with her machine work, she looks to use technology to take down (or more "tame") tornados. Don't believe she can stop them? Just watch. Especially when she's teamed up with the tracking of 'In The Heights', 'Hamilton' and 'A Star Is Born' star Anthony Ramos (completing this big-three that could give this franchise a trilogy ('Twister Twins' anyone?), a year after he built transforming franchises with 'Rise Of The Beasts'). Complete with the best glass of water trick you've seen since 'Jurassic Park' and his own Dorothy for this OZ. But we ain't in Kansas any more. Even a new Superman riding shotgun (David Corenswet, sweating it out though his cornstarched shirt, as a Bizaroo version of the Man Of Steel), can't huff and puff and blow this tornado down.

We don't have cows to cloud cover monitor this weather any more. But even in this digital age of modern movies, 'Twisters' still captures the practical effects and huge sets for the set pieces of 'Twister' (cue the streaming search confusion), which was not a movie about a fast-talking, Guinness World Record rapper. But this 'kamikaze' mission from 'Minari' director Lee Isaac Chung (scripted by 'The Revenants' revered Mark L. Smith) will tie you in knots like one of the Windy City rapper's rhymes. Co-starring the "twins...we got twins" line of 'Nope's' Brandon Perea, 'The Mandalorian' scene-stealer Katy O'Brian, 'ER' and 'The Iron Claw' great Maura Tierney and 'American Honey' and Loki' star Sasha Lane, this surprise summer smash can even claw away at 'Deadpool and Wolverine'. Hanging on, much like me after suffering sunstroke and needing to throw up right as this movie was in its third and final act (just blow away, already). My stomach doing twists and turns as it felt like a 4D experience. But more than that TMI, 'Twisters' shows real respect and heart for the actual victims of real natural disasters in America and around the watching world. So much so, something fell down my left cheek, and it wasn't rain. Keep an eye on this storm. TIM DAVID HARVEY.

Further Filming: 'Twister', 'Armageddon', 'Top Gun: Maverick'.