Twister

The family that chases tornadoes together, stays together.

That unique insight is the central point to Twister. Fortunately, Twister doesn't need much of a point. The movie succeeds nicely as an action-filled exercise in the surprisingly danger-filled pursuit of weather forecasting.

Twister also manages to breathe new life into the disaster genre as it takes a moribund formula and treat it as if every contrived moment was fresh and new. The movie has a fun time with the usual list of suspects and manages to take a relaxed liberal position in a genre typically noted for its more overtly fundamentalist attitudes (well, what are disaster movies except modernized biblical tales).

As it might be written in the Gospel According to Irwin Allen, it is a dark and extraordinarily stormy night in Oklahoma. A massive set of cold and warm fronts are about to collide across the American Midwest, an event which normally sends every hick in the stick scurrying for the nearest storm shelter.

But Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) isn't just a hick. She is a scientist and tornadoes are both her passion and her nemesis. She has especially been obsessed by them ever since her childhood. The sight of her father (and the barn door) vanishing into the maw of a nasty cyclone still haunts her. For her, storm-chasing (which is the nickname for her profession) is a form of therapy.

Likewise, her husband Bill (Bill Paxton) is also remarkably obsessive about funnel clouds. He feels that he has some sort of a psychic bonding with the storms and can often sense their impending arrival. All he has to do is pick up a handful of dirt, look briefly skyward, and suddenly he knows more than the National Weather Service.

Unfortunately, he doesn't have as much bonding with Helen as he does with an Arctic air mass. Which is why he shows up at the storm front with divorce papers in one hand and a girlfriend (Jami Gertz) in the other. Though he and Helen have been separated for some months, she still thought that they might patch things up during brief lulls on the radar map.

Jo and her fellow storm-chasers are a tad miffed with Bill. Not so much about the girl-friend, but more so because he has taken a job as a television weather forecaster and insists that he isn't going to run after tornadoes anymore.

Since the rest of the team of storm-chasers are all young research assistants (cutely played by Alan Ruck and Philip Hoffman), the result is more like a disjointed family rather than a pack of meteorologists. Mom and the kids obviously know that they are just going have to weather out old dad's mid-life crisis. Besides, the girl-friend is a marital therapist who has been helping Bill to
develop his sense of personal responsibility.

Besides, the storm-chasers know that Bill can't resist a chance to try out his own invention. The central focus to their pursuit is a devise called "Dorothy," a canister loaded with sensors that can track the interior forces of a tornado. Since his chief professional rival (Cary Elwes) is also on the chase with a similar gizmo (a tarted up rip off of the home spun original), Bill is strongly tempted.

The only problem is that "Dorothy" has to be planted right in the path of an oncoming cyclone in order to work. Does this mean that the rest of the movie is spent with everybody driving like lunatics toward assorted twirling behemoths? You bet. After all, Twister is directed by the same man who did Speed.

As a director, Jan De Bont doesn't make movies so much as he constructs thrill rides. But he also happens to be very good at building cinematic roller coasters and Twister delivers much of the same wild, punchy fun as did Speed.

Though Twister has already been widely criticized for its weak storyline and characters, the movie is actually better scripted and performed than it has been given credit. Both Hunt and Paxton give solid, understated performances that keep their characters warm and convincing even while the stunt work does otherwise.

Besides, neither Hunt nor Paxton are the main stars in this film. That honour belongs to the stunningly vivid monsters of the vortex produced in the software labs of Industrial Light and Magic. As the tornadoes start flinging cows and oil tankers across the screen, the film jerks to life at its own rude level.

Which is enough to place Twister ahead of many other current Hollywood films. Throw in a few more flying cows and the movie could almost be a masterpiece.