 A mile-wide, 300 miles-per-hour force of total devastation is coming at you! In this adventure swirling with cliffhanging excitement and awesome special effects, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton play scientists pursuing the most destructive weatherfront to sweep through mid-America's Tornado Alley in 50 years. By launching electronic sensors into the funnel, the storm chasers hope to obtain data to create an improved warning system. But to do so, they must intercept the twisters' deadly path. The chase is on! Storyline: TV weatherman Bill Harding is trying to get his tornado-hunter wife, Jo, to sign divorce papers so he can marry his girlfriend Melissa. But Mother Nature, in the form of a series of intense storms sweeping across Oklahoma, has other plans. Soon the three have joined the team of stormchasers as they attempt to insert a revolutionary measuring device into the very heart of several extremely violent tornados. Written by Martin H. Booda Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman on May 5, 2008 -- Tighten your seatbelt. Perhaps the end-all, be-all of disaster movies, 1996's Twister ushered in a new era for the genre, a film with then-unparalleled special effects and an awe-inspiring sound design (and its no coincidence the movie was nominated for two Academy Awards, one for each of those categories). Though far-removed from the height of the disaster genre (see The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, and Airport, all out of the 1970s), Twister brought the genre to the forefront of movie lover's minds once again, and disaster-centric films, this time laden with awe-inspiring effects but retaining much of the melodrama of their predecessors, began hitting theaters in rapid-fire succession. Dante's Peak, Volcano, Armageddon, and Deep Impact spring to mind as films that followed in Twister's footsteps, the theme this go-round focusing on natural disasters (either emanating from Earth or the Heavens) reeking havoc on a large scale across the plains (or even wiping out half the planet) rather than on isolated incidents and locations (planes, cruise ships, or high rises). True, the disaster film has always been a part of cinema culture and lore, but credit Twister with setting the bar much higher than ever before, a film that takes no prisoners and shows just how nasty and deadly nature can be, all wrapped up in a fun, loud, and engaging motion picture. Dr. Jo Harding (Helen Hunt, Cast Away) doesn't much care for tornadoes. As a young girl, she saw her father lost in an F5 tornado, the strongest and deadliest category imaginable. She's dedicated her life to the study of the deadly funnels and is set on testing a revolutionary tornado analytical system meant to vastly improve man's knowledge about how the storms work and, hopefully, save lives by increasing both awareness and lead time before disaster strikes. Her soon-to-be ex-husband, Bill (Bill Paxton, U- 571) is serving her with final copies of their divorce papers, papers which she seems reluctant to sign. In the middle of their discussion (with Bill's new fiancé in tow), a storm hits, and Bill and Jo instantly revert to storm chaser mode, hoping to successfully unleash to the winds the above-referenced newfangled device, dubbed "Dorothy". A night of unsuccessful attempts, deadly storms, dangerous situations, and an uncooperative and nasty rival set of storm chasers just might help Bill and Jo remember what they love most, smack-dab in the middle of several of the most hellacious storms Oklahoma has ever seen. I'd forgotten what a fantastic ensemble cast had been assembled for this movie. Besides Paxton and Hunt, we've got the venerable Philip Seymour Hoffman (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead), Jeremy Davies (Saving Private Ryan), Alan Ruck (Speed), and Cary Elwes (Saw), to name but a few. Each of them is excellently cast and never once do they convince us of anything less than being the genuine article, real-life storm chasers. Of course, the real star of the movie is nature itself (or a reasonable CGI facsimile thereof, fairly-well rendered and still holding up rather well today). While the movie never forgets its intent is to entertain and show audiences cows, tractors, petroleum trucks, and any numerous large-scale debris one can imagine being tossed hither, thither, and yon by one of nature's deadliest of forces, it still manages to retain some semblance of a plot, well-written and played characters, and a finely-tuned and immaculately detailed look at small-town life in "tornado alley." In other words, Twister got it right, giving equal time and effort to both the meat-and potatoes of the movie as well as the finer details that make the movie a movie and not just shot after shot of ubiquitous and eventually tiresome effects and noise. Nevertheless, Twister doesn't try all that hard to keep any secrets from us. We know we're being led to an F5 storm as the centerpiece of the movie's climax, but that's perfectly fine, in this case. It's the ride that gets us there that really counts. We're given a glance of the destructive force of the F5 in the movie's opening minutes, and as each storm Bill, Jo, and crew track down, the category goes up a notch, beginning with an F2 and ending with an F5. We're awestruck by the power of these weaker storms, a "solid F2 or F3" nearly killing our heroes and picking up their jeep and dropping it feet away from Bill's new fiancé, and we eagerly wait with bated breath just how much more powerful these other storms can possibly be, and how much more destruction, and on what scale, they can cause. We're not let down in the least, the movie literally placing us in the middle of several dangerous, precarious, and disastrous sequences, using almost every sense (I never did taste the dirt and debris flying into my mouth, though) to throw us smack-dab into the clutches of death. Twister is like an amusement park ride on film, and does it ever work. Fun, loud, entertaining, and scary, its no wonder that it continues to be a fan favorite film. Twister leaps like a whirlwind beyond your standard popcorn entertainment, being an honest to goodness movie with a plot, good characters, and excellent production values. What could have been another generic disaster movie is instead an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride into one of nature's deadliest and most fascinating means of destruction. I have no idea how scientifically accurate the film may or may not be, but I do know that as a movie fan, they don't come much better than this when I'm craving a loud, tense, and exhilarating experience. This Blu-ray edition of Twister is a solid one, if not slightly underwhelming. I was somewhat disappointed by the overall video quality, but its lower-than-expected score doesn't mean it's not good. It's fine, in fact, but it's certainly not as good as the upper-echelon discs out there. Sonically is where this disc truly shines, creating an immersive, at times seemingly violent, frightening, and highly entertaining listen. The extras are about as expected, and I enjoyed and appreciated the History Channel feature more so than the generic studio-produced pieces. Overall, this is a solid package of a good movie. Recommended! Cast Notes: Helen Hunt (Dr. Jo Harding), Bill Paxton (Bill Harding), Cary Elwes (Dr. Jonas Miller), Jami Gertz (Dr. Melissa Reeves), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Dustin Davis), Lois Smith (Meg Greene), Alan Ruck (Robert 'Rabbit' Nurick), Sean Whalen (Allan Sanders), Scott Thomson (Jason 'Preacher' Rowe), Todd Field (Tim 'Beltzer' Lewis), Joey Slotnick (Joey), Wendle Josepher (Haynes), Jeremy Davies (Laurence), Zach Grenier (Eddie), Gregory Sporleder (Willie). IMDb Rating (07/31/14): 6.2/10 from 124,205 users IMDb Rating (11/15/10): 6.0/10 from 62,324 users
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