Twisters (12A)

Old-school blockbusters are back! Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell are the charismatic leads of a sharply edited, rollickingly good weather-based romp.

The original Twister was the smash-hit 90s disaster film about tornado chasers. Now, nearly 40 years later, we’re treated to a second helping of gutsy, and gusty, summer fun.

Two breeds of nerd, brow to brow in a crisis – makes for endearing protagonists. One is Kate Cooper (Edgar-Jones), a gifted meteorologist, still distrought by a disastrous field experiment in which a tornado claimed the lives of three friends. The other is Tyler Owens (Powell), a swaggering self-styled ‘tornado wrangler’ with a million followers on YouTube, and an ego that could out-blow most of the storms he pursues. Kate has a new scientific plan to fire chemical reagents up into the twister to halt its terrifying spiral and thereby save lives and communities.

It’s expressive and, at times, intense to the point of being frightening, but you can always keep a good handle on who’s where and what’s going on. The film’s climactic tribute to the original’s movie drive-in sequence will go down as one of the year’s best action sequences. Buckle up.