The Hurricane Heist has almost everything you want in a disaster movie—improbable physics, inane dialog, Bulgaria standing in for Alabama, terrible American accents, and spectacular visuals. Plus killer hubcabs of death! The only thing it’s missing is a dog in peril.
Maggie Grace (Lost, the Taken series) plays Casey, an ATF agent babysitting $600 million on its way to the shredder at a US Mint facility in Alabama. Little does she know that a gang of thieves has a plan to rob said facility, taking advantage of the arrival of a VERY convenient and massive hurricane to cover their tracks.
Meanwhile, we have estranged brothers Will and Breeze (yep, Breeze)–Brit Toby Kebbell (Kong: Skull Island) and Aussie Ryan Kwanten (True Blood), respectively–whose father naturally was killed by a hurricane. Each has dealt with the trauma in his own way–one gets a PhD in meteorology (Will), and the other is working as a boozy repairman after serving in Afghanistan (Breeze). These two inadvertently become entangled in the heist and Casey’s efforts to foil it, and Must Work Together and Overcome Their Past despite being crippled by horrendous American Southern accents.
Rob Cohen, the director of The Fast and the Furious and xXx, got hold of a screenplay based on Richard Wickliffe’s novel Storm Crashers and just went to town. The thieves take over the facility, then the power goes out, so they kidnap Breeze to come and repair the generator, so Will needs to rescue him, and Casey is the only one who can reset the password on the vault, and Will and Casey must knock out the cell tower, which somehow is controlling the shredder, and IT/meteorology something-something-mumbo-jumbo, and you know what? It doesn’t matter. Let’s just focus on the use of hubcabs as weapons and the sight of three US Mint 18-wheelers trying to outrun a solid wall of storm. Suffice it to say that the good guys prevail, and the bad guys learn their lesson.
Along the way, we get anvilled with messages about climate change, I assume to give the film some redeeming value. But they really didn’t need to—I was in the minute Will said “We’re about to get crushed by the biggest storm of the century!” And I’m not sure how you can have a skull in the clouds during hurricanes, but, you know, symbolism.
Heist is a ton of fun if you set your expectations correctly. If you do, it’s a solid A.
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