As fast and furious as the tornadoes that are the villains of this film, Twister is mindless fun (well, unless you happen to be in the path of a tornado) that offers some great action scenes as well as thrill and chills. Watch out for that flying cow!
Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) leads a storm chasing team. She has a personal stake in chasing down tornadoes since she saw her dad killed by one. Her soon to be ex-husband Bill (Bill Paxton) shows up with his new fiancé Melissa (Jami Gertz) in tow to get the divorce papers signed.
Bill discovers that Jo has developed a device called DOROTHY (Wizard of Oz reference there) that will study a tornado from the inside out. Jo’s dedicated team is more along the rag tag lot, including “Dusty” (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and “Rabbit” (Alan Ruck). They face competition from the flashy, media savvy Jonas (Cary Elwes) who dogs their every move so that he can take credit for the discoveries since he’s not as good at chasing storms as Jo’s team.
Jo and Bill form an uneasy truce as they both try to launch DOROTHY, but realize to get her “out of Kansas” they’re going to have to get closer to the twister than ever.
Although being around when a tornado is plowing through your town is not exactly something to be called fun, the movie is a special effects extravaganza that could be called both fun and suspenseful.
The movie does seem to strain credibility as the tornadoes are made the villains of the film. It seems that Hunt has been targeted by the sinister storms, not unlike that pesky shark started to do in the later Jaws sequel. The film does a good job of making you think that, especially when the twister cuts through a drive-in theater showing the Shining and seemingly takes on the disturbed visage of Jack Nicholson’s mad character from it.
I read in one of my movie books that Twister was basically a redo of His Girl Friday but with twisters instead of the newspaper biz. That made me laugh because it’s really true.
The plot of Bill, Jo, and Melissa very closely follows that film and I think it hilarious to recall that while watching the picture. However, you’re not watching the film for that romantic angle and it’s the computer generated storms that you’ll be popping the DVD into the player.
There are still some great action bits and the special effects hold up more than they fail (the techniques used have been refined in the intervening years and you can imagine that they could do them better today). I don’t think you’ll earn a meteorological degree, but you’ll have a good, suspenseful time.
Twister is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. This new edition boasts a newly remastered picture as well. Disc one contains a commentary by director Jan de Bont and visual effects supervisor Stefen Fangmeier. There are also two theatrical trailers totaling 4 minutes.
Disc two starts off with the new 28 minute “Chasing the Storm: Twister Revisited.” It has new comments from de Bont, Fangmeier, Bill Paxton, effects supervisor John Frazier, and stunt coordinator Mic Rogers. Next are the 1996 vintage “Making of Twister” (13 minutes) and “Anatomy of a Twister” (8 minutes). There’s also a music video for Van Halen’s “Humans Being.”
The 45 minute History Channel program “Nature Tech: Tornadoes” examines the destructive weather phenomenon. Finally there’s a 44 second preview for a video game called “Flat Out Ultimate Carnage.”
The drama is just as manufactured as the digital storms, but the film still continues to thrill. Twister may have some hot wind here and there, but this new edition adds enough to justify the upgrade if you have the older editions.
Twister (Two-Disc Special Edition) is now available at Amazon . As of yet, this version of the DVD is not available in the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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