Tornado!

We all know what the problem is with disaster movies: they never look like the real thing. If you've seen a documentary about storm chasers, every movie you see about tornadoes just doesn't feel real. The same here, although I have to admit that I liked it more than Twister. The reason why I think this one is better is because it tries to be faithful to the reality, while in Twister all that mattered were the spectacular special effects.

"Tornado!" tells the story of Dr. Branson who has developed a device that can do a lot of measurements when it is placed in the middle of a tornado. Of course his team receives money from the government for that, but the government wants to see results. Sam Callen is sent to Texas to shut down Dr. Branson's project, but gives him a few days to come up with some results for him to be able to continue his project.

Of course the team is made up by a naive scientist, a nerd and some cowboys, while Sam Callen is a yuppie that has no interest in tornadoes, but only thinks about her job and the results she has to book. I guess I don't have to make a drawing of what is going to happen next: she's always in a fight with one of the storm chasers, but in the end they fall in love... I guess that's the way Hollywood thinks it always goes.

As I already said the storms aren't the real deal and the story is predictable, but at least it isn't as unbelievable as Twister. And we have to take into account that the makers of Twister had a much bigger budget than the people who did this movie. That's why I give this movie a score of 5,5/10.

I was surprised by this movie. Don't get me wrong...this movie is no academy award winner, but it's better (more accurate) than Twister, which had to have the bigger budget by far. There actually was a device that was used by tornado researchers a while ago, called Toto I think, like the device that's in the movie. I don't think that it ever actually came in contact with a tornado though. I was also surprised at how the National Weather Service was portrayed in the movie. They (in particular SPC, which is actually the Storm Prediction Center) seem very inept and ineffective, which is an unfair portrait. The acronym "SPC" is never actually defined in the movie either, I don't think, which is strange considering that I think most people wouldn't know what SPC was. The ending of the movie is a little hokey, but this movie was a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

"Tornado!" is actually quite similar to "Twister", so if you have seen that movie, then you know what you are in for here. But don't let that discourage you from watching the movie, because "Tornado!" actually is good entertainment.

Initially I picked up the movie because it had Bruce Campbell in it. And I must admit that I was sort of expecting his usual comedy-acting in the movie, so it was a rather nice surprise to see him acting seriously for a chance, and he really did a good job at it as well.

The story is about Jake Thorne (played by Bruce Campbell) and Dr. Joe Branson (played by Ernie Hudson) who are chasing after tornadoes in order to study them for future predictions. The government sends out an official to get results or have their project shut down, this is Samantha Callen (played by Shannon Sturges).

"Tornado!" doesn't boast the best of CGI effects or special effect, but whatever effects they did use actually worked out well enough, though at times I could have wanted a bit more furious effects to make it seem that the tornado was actually there and being rampant. But overall, the effects were adequate enough. Just don't expect to be dazzled by state-of-the-art CGI.

If you like disaster movies, then "Tornado!" is definitely worth giving a chance, because it is far better than so many other doomsday-like disaster movies available. And if you are a fan of Bruce Campbell, then you should most definitely check out this particular movie.

i'll start with the positives.i really like the characters that Bruce Campbell and Ernie Hudson played.they were both very likable.Bruce Campbell did a very good job in his role as a storm chaser.not once did i think of him in his Evil Dead persona.Ernie Hudson was also credible in his role as a scientist who had been trying for years to perfect an early warning system he had developed.other than that,there is not a lot to recommend this movie.we see very few tornadoes in the movie.it is more of a drama than anything else.it was boring at times,to say the least.of far as these types of movies go,this one is very low key and sedate at times.there is also nothing original in it.you basically have the same bunch of characters,just with different names.it passes the time,but that's about it.4/10

Get real. Any movie starring Bruce Campbell is expected to be a B-movie. The COOL thing about that here is that instead of its counterpart, Twister, they decided on something that looked real, rather than something that looked exciting. I haven't seen Twister since I saw it in the theater. It blew, and I didn't give a crap about any of the characters or the story. As far as I'm concerned, THEY ripped THIS off, and made it a "sensation" of CGI crap. The characters are more believable, as are the effects and the story. I may have rated this a 6, but Twister is about a 2...and only because of the flying cow and Bill Paxton is it not a 1.