Lee Isaac Chung’s new film “Twisters” serves us as much as expected, and it did a fairly good job on the whole. While not going that far from the story formula established in its predecessor “Twister” (1996), the movie provides a number of big and stormy moments as demanded, and these moments are certainly worthwhile to watch in a big screening room equipped with an excellent sound system.

While it is connected with its predecessor to some degree, the movie works as a standalone piece featuring the completely different story and characters, though it is still all about chasing after tornadoes and then beholding their awesomely catastrophic power. This time, we meet a young female meteorologist named Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), and the opening sequence shows her and her several colleagues attempting their little scientific experiment on a tornado in the middle of Oklahoma, which turns out to be much more dangerous than expected. As a result, three of her colleagues get killed in the end, and she is certainly devastated by the consequence of her serious error.

Five years later, Kate is now working at the New York City branch of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), but then she is approached by her surviving colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos), who has been participating in another tornado research project in Oklahoma. He suggests that she should join his ongoing project at least for a week, and Kate agrees to return to Oklahoma that even though she has not fully recovered from the trauma of that horrible tornado incident.

On the first day, Kate and Javi and their research team come across a bunch of other storm chasers, and one particular group comes to draw their attention. This group, which has been considerably famous due to its constant online promotion, is led by a guy named Tyler (Glen Powell), and Kate and Javi are not so pleased to see how this rather cocky dude and his team often compete with their team for chasing after the latest tornado to come.

However, Kate comes to change her opinion about Tyler and his colleagues as getting to know them more during next several days. They may look a bit too showy and ridiculous on the surface, but most of them are also well-experienced professionals, and Tyler turns out to be more intelligent and thoughtful than expected, though he was totally wrong about Kate’s background from the beginning.

In the meantime, Kate also comes to discern that Javi is not totally honest about how his research team has been funded. His main financial backer turns out to be a wealthy real estate businessman who will probably benefit a lot from Javi’s research, and Kate becomes more distant from Javi and his team after getting to learn more about their main financial backer.

While the screenplay by Mark L. Smith, which is developed from the story by Joseph Kosinski, stumbles and lags a bit during its middle act, the movie keeps rolling as handing out one big stormy sequence another. I was a bit disappointed to see that it does not have something as outrageous as the sudden appearance of that unfortunate cow in “Twister”, but its tornado sequences are grand and terrifying enough to hold my attention for a while, and I was not disappointed at all in case of the expected climatic part where Kate must confront a very huge tornado for her scientific success (Is this a spoiler?).

The three main cast members naturally look inconsequential in front of all these gigantic (and expensive) CGI spectacles in the film, but they manage to hold each own place well without being overshadowed by a lot of special effects on the screen. Daisy Edgar-Jones, who was memorable as the ill-fated heroine of “Fresh” (2022), fills her character with enough spirit and presence, and we accordingly root more for her character along the story. On the opposite, Glen Powell, who has been one of the most promising new actors to watch since his fun supporting turn in “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022), functions well as an effective counterpart to his co-star, and Anthony Ramos, who has steadily advanced after his electrifying lead performance in “In the Heights” (2021), acquits himself well despite his rather thankless supporting part.

Around these three main cast members, the movie assembles a bunch of interesting performers to notice. While Brandon Perea and Sasha Lane are the showiest ones in the bunch, Maura Tierney briefly appears as Kate’s concerned mother later in the story, and I was especially delighted to see Tunde Adebimpe again, whom I still fondly remember for his gentle supporting performance in “Rachel Getting Married” (2008).

In conclusion, “Twisters” is a competent blockbuster product packed with enough spectacles for your ticket price, and Chung, who previously received a Best Director Oscar nomination for his modest but undeniably powerful Korean American immigrant drama “Minari” (2020), demonstrates here that he can also handle well a big-budget film like this. Although it is not better than “Minari”, this movie will probably lead him to better things to come, and I will surely look forward to watching whatever he will make next.