Twenty-eight years after hit cinemas with Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, the quasi-sequel has arrived – and it is loud and silly and worth the wait.
Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell, the new film sees Daisy's Kate Connor, who had once dreamed of taming the tornadoes, lured back to the plains of Oklahoma by her college friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) as he believes he now has the technology to learn more about how twisters are formed.
The film opens with Kate and Javi, and three other friends, working on a college experiment that uses weather sensors and a homemade solution to attempt to find ways to destabilize the tornado with the goal of forcing it to disperse.
This opening montage – atmospheric shots of the open rolling plains as the storm clouds form and the anticipation levels ratchet up – throws the audience directly into the action while much-needed exposition explains Kate's goal and how she is using technology known as Dorothy (a well-placed callback to the original that ties the two together) for her hypothesis.
But tragedy strikes, and Kate leaves behind her hopes for a job in New York City as a meteorologist, until Javi gets in touch and – despite remaining vague about the financing – asks her to join him for one week in Oklahoma as his team, Storm Par, plans to conduct a new scanning system for tornadoes.
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Five years have passed however, and Kate is shocked to realize that storm chasing is now a scene, with groups of teams converging in Oklahoma, seemingly enjoying the thrill of the hunt. One of those storm chasers is Tyler Owens (Powell), known as the "Tornado Wrangler," who has his own YouTube channel and sells merchandise.
His brashness and outwardly cavalier attitude towards the danger and destruction of tornadoes rubs Kate the wrong way, and as the two teams meet out on the open roads of Oklahoma, the film gets back to the popcorn movie spectacle the audience wants: banter between the two leads and the heart-racing anticipation that tornadoes can, literally, strike at any time and in any number of ways.
But while Tyler appears at first to relish the danger and sell that to the mass population through his five million subscribers, Kate has only ever wanted to try to tame the tornado, and the generations-long ruination of small towns in Tornado Alley.
This duality is where Glen and Daisy come to life as Tyler and Kate, as they both realize their perceptions of the other may have been incorrect, and that they may need to work together after all.
Daisy, who found fame in 2020 for her work on Normal People, relishes the wit that is written into the script for Kate, showing a wry smirk when needed but also a hidden softness that is buried under years of guilt.
Tyler is the perfect character for Glen – there is a scene in the second act where Tyler walks through the rain in blue denim jeans, a white tee and a cowboy hat that had half the theater screaming in delight and the other half laughing at the sheer boldness of putting such a gif-able scene in the film.
But it's clear Glen ( is in on the joke, which is what makes him on the 21st century's best leading men, along with the ability to offer vulnerabilities in which could have been a two-dimensional character.
Kate's arc is also one that, thankfully, never strays too far into soapbox territory, instead keeping the focus on the action rather than the substance, and it's not a spoiler to say that obviously it is Kate who saves the day with an over-the-top, heart-pounding climax that brings together everything she has learned about Mother Nature.
The scene of Kate heading towards the danger while three men stand in a doorway and watch her? That's cinema.
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