Release date (India):
|
August 8, 2014
|
Director:
|
Steven Quale
|
Cast:
Language:
|
Richard Armitage,
Sarah Wayne Callies, Matt Walsh, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Nathan Kress, Max
Deacon, Jerry Sumpter, Arlen Escarpeta, Scott Lawrence
English
|
Into The Storm is a 90-minute-long
unrelenting adrenaline rush. Not much more. Nothing less.
The humans
in the film are subordinate to the tornadoes that strike, as is the case with
all natural disaster movies. The difference here is that director Steven Quale
does not pretend otherwise. Disaster flicks require incredible writing skills
to convey genuine involvement in the lives of their characters. Most end up
being schmaltzy and/or cliched in the effort. Into The Storm takes an alternative route, which too is not a bad
idea: it gives us three primary characters around whom to wrap the
twisters, but unlike other films of the genre, it does not for a second claim
to be more concerned about them than it is about ensuring that the audience has
an awesome special-effects-ridden experience.
And
awesome it truly is! Every long shot of towns being uprooted, every medium shot
and close-up of those ghastly winds, that Gravity-like
uplifting scene in the eye of a storm (“a sight only God has seen”)… awesome is
an understatement. You can guess how much fun this film is from the fact that
I’ve used that awful word here thrice already, after years of threatening to
boycott teenaged friends every time they utter it.
The
people in the story are incidental but not insignificant. First up is Garry
(Richard Armitage), vice-principal of a high school in the US town of Silverton,
which is preparing for the graduation of its senior class. Garry has asked his sons
to record on-camera messages from the students passing out, for a time capsule
to be opened in 25 years. Trey (Nathan Kress) follows his father’s
instructions, while Donnie (Max Deacon) quietly takes off to help his
schoolmate and long-time crush Caitlyn (Alycia Debnam-Carey) with
an assignment. Then there’s Pete (Matt Walsh), a professional storm chaser
travelling around the country with a team, in a tank that can withstand winds
up to 170mph, followed by a van that is in effect a meteorological department
on the move. Finally, there’s Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies), Pete’s
met
expert who is missing her little daughter back home.
Into The Storm is a film in the
found footage genre. If you’ve seen the Paranormal
Activity series (or Dibakar Banerjee’s Love
Sex Aur Dhoka and Pavan Kripalani’s Ragini MMS here at home), you know what that means: a film running partly or fully
on footage shot by characters in the drama. The idea behind the genre is to
conjure up a sense of reality, a feeling that we as viewers have been a part of
the filmmaking process along with the person/s – known or unknown – behind the
camera. Into The Storm smartly
escapes the sometimes-physically-nauseating shakiness of such films though, with
the plot cleverly ensuring that the characters operating the equipment are
either pros (Pete’s videographers) or accomplished amateurs (Trey and Donnie).
The desire to convey a moral-of-the-story right in the end
marginally diminishes Into The Storm. The
simplistic nature of the message makes it worse. According to this film, in
times of crisis we discover a core of basic human goodness in even the worst
people. Perhaps this is true in most cases. Yet it’s naïve to not also
acknowledge the existence of pure, unvarnished evil. The healthy youngster who
pushes aside an old or pregnant person to escape a stampede
is not a fiction. Locals who steal jewellery and cash from corpses at plane
crash sites are not a fiction. The truth is that crisis brings out the best in
some people and the worst in others.
This brief detour is an unnecessary diversion in a film that
otherwise sticks doggedly to being an SFX fiesta. As things stand, it’s a
visual spectacle. Brian Tyler’s music stays just right – at no point is it
overwhelming. And the lives of Garry, Pete and Allison are given minimalist
treatment, which is what makes them so effective. A lesser film might have delivered
long-drawn-out back-stories and rounded things off with a mushy Garry-Allison
romance; this one chooses to end in an unexpected fashion on that front.
A friend asked as we left the hall: What’s the difference
between Into The Storm and Twister (that 1996 film about tornadoes
starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton)? Answer: this one has less story and has
taken advantage of 18 years of advancements in film technology to deliver even
better special effects.
Into The Storm will probably
become obsolete as soon as a new twister film with next-generation SFX comes
around. For the moment though, the effects are breathtaking, the pace is
spot-on and the inexorable tension is mind-blowing. If you are looking for
emotional depth, you won’t find much of it here. But just as some folk go
to watch Fast and Furious films simply
to see fast cars, if your tastes lie in that direction then Into The Storm is worth watching simply for
the storm. Believe me, it is (here comes that awful word again) awesome.
Rating (out of five): **3/4
CBFC Rating (India):
|
U/A
|
Running time:
MPAA Rating (US):
|
90 minutes
PG-13 (for sequences of intense destruction and peril, and
language including some sexual references)
|
Release date in the US:
|
August 8, 2014
|
