Twister movie review & film summary (1996)
Jo (Helen Hunt) is his first wife. Jo and Bill (Bill Paxton) worked happily together as storm chasers for several years, before something went out of their marriage (the movie is too breathless to ever tell us what that was) and Bill filed for divorce. Jo still loves Bill. Hell, Bill still loves Jo. Even Melissa (Jami Gertz) can see that.
As the film opens, Bill wants Jo to sign the divorce papers, and so he visits her out in a field where she's staked out with their old team, waiting for twisters to come by. Also staked out is the oily Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes), the “Night Crawler,” who is also a storm chaser--an evil one, we can tell, because all of his vehicles are black, and, even worse, he has “corporate sponsorship.” Before Bill and Jonas can exchange more than a few heated words and some wild swings (“Your temper hasn't gotten any better,” Jo observes), they're all careening across the countryside in pursuit of twisters. It's a good day for them. By the end of the movie, we will have seen five, including a double twister (“The Sisters”) and a dreaded Level 5 Tornado (“The Finger of God”--no prizes for guessing which one).
Before they split up, Bill and Jo invented “Dorothy,” which is a machine for studying tornadoes. Listen carefully and I will tell you how Dorothy works. Dorothy contains hundreds of little plastic spheres that have sensors inside. “You put Dorothy in the path of a tornado, and run like hell,” another storm chaser helpfully explains. In theory, the spheres are swooped up into the Suck Zone, and send back lots of rare information on conditions inside a twister.
The evil Jonas has ripped off Dorothy (his copycat machine is called D.O.T. 3). But the spheres don't seem to work too well. They spill in the road and stay there, until Jo takes a second look at the wind sculptures created by her Aunt Meg (Lois Smith), and realizes that each sphere needs a little wing. Then follows one of the movie's unforgettable lines: “I need every aluminum can you can find! And duct tape!” Well, wouldn't you know that every single aluminum can they can find is a Pepsi can, although it's beyond me why Pepsi thinks disappearing into the Suck Zone qualified as advantageous product placement.
“Twister,” directed by Jan de Bont, is tireless filmmaking. It lacks the wit of his “Speed,” but it sure has the energy. If the actors in this movie want to act, they have to run to catch up with the camera, which is already careening down a dirt road to watch while an oil tanker truck spins into the air, crashes and explodes. The movie is wall-to-wall with special effects, and they're all convincing, although it's impossible for me to explain how Bill and Jo escape serious injury while staring right up into the Suck Zone of the Finger of God.
