This is one of the movie that I highly anticipated ever since I saw its poster few months ago. My wife and I are big fan of the original 1996 film (boy that was so long ago). So when it was informed that this movie would be released on Wednesday, we decided to not wait till the weekend and bought the tickets through its advance sale option. OK, let's get on with the movie then.

Brief Story Line

Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones - Where the Crawdads Sing, Under the Banner of Heaven mini series etc) had been working as an expert weather analyst in New York until she was approached by her old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos - Transformers: Rise of the Beast, She's Gotta Have It TV series etc) to work on finding data of tornado. Despite her reluctance due to her past experience, Kate decided to accompany Javi to Oklahoma where a series of tornadoes were hitting the state. She would later meet with Javi's team members including the rather skeptical and snobbish Scott (David Corenswet - Look Both Ways etc).

Turned out that there were also other people chasing after the tornado in Oklahoma, including the most high profile Tyler Owens (Glen Powell - Hit Man, Anyone But You etc) who had his own Youtube channel and accompanied by his cameraman Boone (Brandon Perea - Nope etc), plus a reporter from London Ben (Harry Hadden-Paton - Downtown Abbey TV series etc). As the two teams compete, they would soon find that there were more important matter especially when a very large tornado was coming and endangering the people.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

As someone who was in total awe when seeing the 1996 original movie Twister in the cinema, I obviously would not want to miss experiencing this on the big screen. That's why my wife and I went to one of the favorite cinema of ours with very large screen that we have not gone to for a while as the mall was being renovated. And to my delight, the studio did provide Dolby Atmos sound effect, unlike the few times we went to another cinema which did not deliver as advertised. Anyway all of those really enhanced our experience since the tornado looked fantastic and combined with great sound system, it was truly satisfying for us.

To be honest, I did not know anything about the plot of this movie (and never saw its trailer before either). But as I started watching, I could have already guessed that it would be rather similar to the original. Except if I recall, the first movie had more drama and probably a bit more humor. Btw in case you are wondering, this is a standalone sequel as no one from the previous movie appeared at all and it has completely different characters. The new lead cast though were great and I felt they had nice chemistry. With Glen Powell's high popularity at the moment and Daisy Edgar-Jones who was getting praise from her recent films, I think they would become main attraction for audience in addition to the special effects.  

The film itself had a large cast. Aside from those names, there were also Maura Tierney (Liar Liar, ER TV series etc) as Kate's mother Cathy, Sasha Lane (Hellboy 2019 version etc), Katy O'brian (Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania etc) and Tunde Adebimpe as Tyler's team members and few others. There was even the appearance of Kiernan Shipka (Totally Killer etc) as Kate's friend Addy who somehow I did not recognize. The funniest thing though was about David Corenswet whom my wife kept on calling "Smallville" due to his large built like Tom Welling. In fact he was actually cast as the next Superman, something that she was not aware of and I did not know till I saw his name later. This movie was directed by Lee Isaac Chung whose film Minari got various awards nomination including Golden Globe and Academy Awards. It was written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant etc) based on story by Joseph Kosinski (director of Top Gun: Maverick etc). Looks like early critics were fine with the movie. Let's see if the Box Office performance is good enough to justify the huge production budget.

For a movie about tornadoes, I think they were quite sufficiently shown. There were few technical terms which sounded real and I totally admired the Indonesian subtitle translator who was able to properly translate them (Great job Nazaret Setiabudi!). The movie's duration was 122 minutes including long closing credit that did not have any post end credit scene but showed few photos and very brief mid credit scene. The story was not difficult to understand, there was a bit of drama but the coolest part were definitely the intensity every time a tornado appeared and the chasers tried their best to get close to it. The competition between the two teams was also nice to see. Personally though, even if the twisters look amazing, somehow the feeling of in awe was not as great as the first time I saw it. Nevertheless I still enjoyed this movie and was really glad to see it in the cinema.

So if you are looking for an adventure movie about tornado chaser with charming cast, light enough story, wonderful special effect, sound and plenty of suspense, then you surely would be entertained by this. It is definitely recommended to experience this in the theater rather than on the small screen. As there was no reference to the original movie, it would not have any major significance even if you have not seen that one. But you could definitely watch that one on streaming if you want to feel the difference. For me and my wife, we had a pleasant time watching this last night.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars