Respond to these rapid questions in our The Hurricane Heist quiz and we will tell you which The Hurricane Heist character you are. Play it now.
For reasons that I am unable to explain, I have appeared to have established myself as this website’s go-to guy when it comes to dealing with films that are based on the silliest possible permutations of what the MPAA once described as “an intense depiction of very bad weather,” which was the basis for the PG-13 rating given to “Twister” (1996) in their classic justification for the PG-13 rating given to “Twister.” Recently, I’ve found myself grappling with no fewer than three chapters in the seemingly endless “Sharknado” saga, as well as the equally lifeless “Geostorm,” films that provide the opportunity to watch actors attempt to maintain a straight face while pretending to be startled by the cheesy-looking CGI effects that were later added in. When I say “The Hurricane Heist” is one of the dumbest variations of the weather-based action thriller subgenre that I have ever seen, the only reason I bring up my credentials in this particular area is so that you can be confident in the fact that I know what I am talking about.
Prologue set in 1992 depicts two young Alabama brothers named Will and Breeze as they attempt to flee the devastation caused by Hurricane Andrew with their father. The film begins with the prologue. To say that things do not go well is an understatement; Dad is crushed by a water tower while his sons watch in horror. To demonstrate that the younger Will has been sufficiently traumatized, he witnesses the clouds transform into a giant screaming skull. 25 years later, Will (Toby Kebbell) is a brilliant government meteorologist who is nonetheless terrified of bad weather, while Breeze (Ryan Kwanten) has remained in their hometown of Gulfport to run Dad’s wrecking and repair business while living in a drunken stupor. Unfortunately, a new superstorm, dubbed Tammy, is bearing down on Gulfport right now. And while his superiors dismiss his dire warnings, Will returns to Gulfport in order to get Breeze out of the way before Tammy makes landfall and sends the cottonwoods into a frenzy.
Meanwhile, a group of miscreants is hatching a scheme to steal more than $600 million in old currency that is scheduled for destruction from a United States Treasury facility. Now, you and I might think that the impending arrival of the millennium’s killstorm will cause even the most meticulously planned heist to be wiped out without a care in the world. The ringleader, disgruntled Treasury employee Perkins (Ralph Ineson), however, not only persists in his plans, but it turns out that the entire caper was devised around exactly such an event, as revealed by the film. Unfortunately, he makes the mistake of concentrating too much on the big picture, and the one person who has a chance of foiling his scheme, fellow agent Casey (Maggie Grace), slips through his fingers with the piece of critical information that he requires in order to make off with the money. When Maggie and Will finally come together, they attempt to thwart Perkins’ plans before the terrifying force of Tammy can take them all away from each other.
But you shouldn’t waste any more time and start this The Hurricane Heist quiz.
To be sure, no one is going into “The Hurricane Heist” expecting a sweeping crime drama on the level of something like “Heat,” and that is a good thing. However, even by the less stringent critical standards that could logically be applied to this film, it fails miserably in its attempts to meet or exceed them. Firstly and foremost, even those who enjoy action nonsense will find the film’s central conceit to be far too ridiculous to be taken on board with. For all I know, “Hard Rain,” one of the many films from which it has blatantly borrowed, is one of the dumbest action movies ever made, but even that comes across as plausible in comparison to this—both films involve heists that take place during terrible weather conditions, but at least the criminals in that film were not counting on the bad weather to go their way. Even worse, screenwriters Scott Windhauser and Jeff Dixon were apparently so enthusiastic about the concept that they never got around to realizing that having an entire film take place during a hurricane would wreak havoc on the visual storytelling—there are plenty of gunfights and car chases on display, but because they are all filtered through torrential rain and wind strong enough to move one of Morrie’s wigs, it is almost impossible to figure out what is going on. Although, to be fair, it does prompt one deathless line of dialogue from one of the bad guys: “All we needed was one little hurricane, and you messed it up!” In contrast, during those brief intervals in which the characters are able to emerge from the rain, the storytelling is just as clumsy—one transition is handled so poorly that I was convinced for a brief moment that an entire section of the film had been accidentally dumped somewhere along the way.
The Hurricane Heist Quiz
“The Hurricane Heist” was directed by Rob Cohen, a filmmaker who is known for creating insane action spectacles, some of which are entertaining (such as the first films in the “Fast and the Furious” and “XXX” franchises), some of which are less so (“Daylight” and “Stealth” among them), and at least one of which (the talking dragon epic “Dragonheart”) has defeated me on every occasion I have attempted to watch it from beginning to end (such as While I will concede that he is probably the most appropriate filmmaker for this particular material, his overall performance in this film is quite poor. The whole thing has the chintzy look of a direct-to-video “Die Hard” knockoff that somehow managed to get theatrical release, and even Steven Spielberg’s “A Small Circle of Friends” had better staging than the action on display in this film. His direction of the performances is just as stale and uninspiring as the rest of the show’s production. As a fan of Cohen’s previous work, the Jennifer Lopez sexploitation film “The Boy Next Door,” I never imagined that he’d be able to make a film dumber and shabbier than his previous effort, let alone accomplish that feat with his very next film.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this The Hurricane Heist quiz.
For the purposes of this review, I’ve referenced a number of earlier films that “The Hurricane Heist” blatantly and badly plagiarizes. When I was watching it, one other title that came to mind was Brian De Palma’s underappreciated conspiracy thriller “Snake Eyes,” which was released in 1998. You may recall that the action of that film took place inside an Atlantic City casino as it was being buffeted by an approaching hurricane. When De Palma first started filming the film, he planned a finale in which the hurricane finally arrived and wreaked havoc, but he famously scrapped that footage and shot an entirely new ending when he realized it was just not working out. Had Cohen followed his lead and cut out all of the hurricane-related material from his film as well, the situation would have been different. Granted, the end result would have been a film with a running time of approximately seven minutes, but believe me when I say that viewers of that hypothetical version would still be getting a better deal than anyone who had to sit through the entire abomination that is “The Hurricane Heist.”
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