Twisting the effects away in hair-raising tornado yarn

By Yenni Kwok

JAKARTA (JP): In Twister, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton may have the leading roles, chasing dreaded tornadoes for the sake of science and humanity. But there is no doubt that the real star of the movie is the tornado itself.

It is wild and powerful. It hurls, flattens everything to the ground, picks up everything; houses, cars, even cows.

Hunt (Mad About You) plays Jo Harding, a tornado-chasing scientist and the estranged wife of ex-tornado chaser, Bill Harding (Paxton of Apollo 13). Their marriage is very close to divorce. Bill is engaged to be married to Dr. Melissa Reeves (Jamie Gertz), until he realizes his love of tornadoes outweighs his love for Melissa.

It is the tornadoes that reunite Jo and Bill. Bill ends up joining Jo and her eight college-nerd looking assistants, chasing tornadoes in a convoy of a pickup, motor home and trucks. They invent Dorothy, data gathering sensor equipment which supplies breakthrough data for better tornado warning.

Because Dorothy's sensors need to be at the core of a twisting tornado, the team need to be ahead of it to place the equipment. At the same time, they race against Jonas (Cary Elwes), who steals Bill's concept of Dorothy, and his well-funded, corporate- sellout team, who drive in their black Darth Vader-like vehicles.

Twister has the right team for an action movie. It was written by Michael Crichton, whose resume includes the box-office thriller Jurassic Park, together with his wife Anne-Marie Martin. The director is Jan De Bont, whose last film Speed skyrocketed Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, the cute couple of the movie, to stardom.

As a result, the action in Twister is less thrilling than the in Jurassic Park (the dinosaurs take more lives than the tornadoes), but far more enjoyable than any action in Speed.

Sure, there is romance. Jo and Bill cannot hide their lingering mutual attraction to each other. However, the romance is unexciting compared to their adventures with tornadoes. It is more thrilling to see Jo and Bill challenge the tornadoes, and it is certainly more fun to see tornadoes make cows fly than seeing the pair's longing looks.

Even Elwes (Princess Bride, Dracula) fails to win the audience's heart as the antagonist. He certainly loses out to the other star of the movie, the tornado.

It is certainly not Elwes's fault. Every feature film needs some kind of human conflict. Perhaps the fear of Twister becoming a Hollywood docudrama prompted the screenwriters to include romance and rivalry in the main story of pursuit of natural disaster.

Hunt is the one who brings human soul to the movie. After all, her character Jo is the most complex of all. As Jo chases tornadoes in the name of science, she also chases answers to dark periods in her past. A tornado blew her father away in front of her when she was small.

Obsession

That is how her obsession with tornadoes started. She grew into a strong-willed, independent and witty woman, which is not such a departure from her character Jamie Buchman in the sitcom Mad About You.

Paxton, on the other hand, is as stiff as wood. His tense seriousness may have been right for his role as an astronaut in Apollo 13, but falls flat in the thrilling movie of natural disaster.

While the Hardings and their young scientists jump in excitement after their near-death adventure with tornadoes, Melissa usually stands speechless or cries in fear. As familiar as scientists may be to natural disasters, we may start to wonder whether these ones feel afraid as they drive alongside the unpredictable tornadoes. Surely Melissa's reaction is possibly the most human of all.

In Twister, watch out for little reminders of Judy Garland and her ever-famous Wizard of Oz. After all, in the United States tornadoes are synonymous with her and the movie. Here are some examples. Jo's dog from her childhood, Toby, looks like Toto of Wizard of Oz. Jo's aunt, Meg, is watching a Judy Garland movie when a tornado hits her town. And of course, the sensor equipment is named Dorothy!

Also checkout the special effects. John Frazier and his team do a very good job in creating dark, angry-looking skies, tornadoes raging over water and ground, flying houses, a flying gas truck, and of course the highlight of it all, the confused flying cows. You are most likely to leave the theater gushing over the tornadoes, not Hunt, Paxton or any of the human stars.