The Hurricane Heist

The Hurricane Heist

Starring Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Ralph Ineson

Directed by Rob Cohen

The Story:
After witnessing the death of their father at the hands of Hurricane Andrew, Will (Toby Kebbell) is now a meteorologist who watches hurricanes and warns people of their impending danger, while his brother Breeze (Ryan Kwanten) remained in their small hometown where he works at his father's repair shop.  As an impending hurricane barrels down on their town, Will sounds the alarm that it will be much more dangerous than they think, but no one believes him.

Meanwhile, Casey (Maggie Grace) - a Treasury agent - has just dropped off money at the Treasury where it's about to be shredded, but the machine has been malfunctioning.  Just as the hurricane hits, a gang of robbers infiltrate the Treasury in hopes of stealing $600 million dollars, but they need Casey to open the safe - but she managed to escape and enlists Will's help to stop the thieves before they get away with the biggest haul in history - as a Category Five hurricane barrels down on them all.

The Synopsis:
Many cinematic fans know the name Roger Corman.  He's been in the business for decades, and directed such cult classics as "The Last Woman on Earth," "Premature Burial," "Teenage Cave Man," and "She Gods of Shark Reef."  He's known for directing and producing utter filth, films that should by no means see the light of day, but somehow he manages to get them financed.  They've become cult classics, but that by no means condones their structure - most are absolutely unwatchable.

"The Hurricane Heist" was not directed by Corman, although you'd be remissed to think he did.  Instead, it was directed by another man with the initials R.C. - Rob Cohen, who also directed the first "Fast and the Furious" and "xXx," so he does have some pedigree in action blockbusters.  This, however, is no action blockbuster - it's an action ball-buster.  A film more suitable for a SyFy Channel original, or one you'd find on a Saturday afternoon on TBS, with some of the most shoddy effects I've seen on the big screen in awhile, a story that seemed to have been written by the half-wit spawn of other half-wits, and actors who are better than appearing in a film like this.

From the opening scene (where we're taken to 1992 Hurricane Andrew, and witness through the eyes of two young kids the death of their father at the hands of the hurricane - actually, it was a silo that toppled on its side and squashed him like God was bowling and he missed the final pin), we know that we're not to take this film seriously at all.  Even apart from the death (which, although unintentional, was laugh-out-loud uproarious...and not the first death that will have you gut-busting), the young kid sees the image of a skull in the hurricane - so the hurricane is actually Satan who destined to kill his father and that was his only purpose, or something.

Fast forward to today, with another hurricane looming on the unsuspecting town (you'd think having a town near a hurricane-heavy area would result in people being smart about it, but this does take place in the south, so it definitely plays to the stereotype), and Will - the kid who saw the skull but now hunts hurricanes because they killed his father (there's an episode of "Family Guy" where Mayor West stabs the ocean because Peter and his friends disappeared in the water, and I couldn't help but correlate that to the events here) - is hot on the heels of the biggest hurricane in history (there's also a mention of how this was done thanks to global warming, although that term is dated as it's now "climate change").  He wants to save his brother, whom he hasn't seen in five years (or we assume, since that's what his brother says), and goes back to his hometown to save him...I just noticed that I have a lot of parenthesis, mostly because my thoughts are as jumbled as this film was, so bear with me.

Then there's the main story, the robbery at the Treasury.  First, we see the players line up, including a British computer hacker - because, hey, you can never trust someone with a British accent (stereotype again)!  Then the attack occurs, but the villains are so nice they don't want to kill anyone (thus keeping the film family-friendly PG-13), so they tranq them to a sweet slumber (I'll add here that one of the soldiers is shot in the butt...so...there's that).  Casey - who's gone through stuff and things, but only hinting at them because we're supposed to care, or guess what happened (personally, I think she's struggling with having split ends in her hair, but I could be wrong) - is a no-nonsense Treasury agent who basically has more brain power than all the robbers, the brothers, and anyone who actually paid money to see this film (thank you MoviePass, you saved me $10!).  She's the only person who can get them into the safe, and she has no plans on going along with their plan.

So after Breeze (I forgot to mention that Will's brother is named Breeze...in a hurricane movie...it would've been so much better if Will's name was actually Rain or something equally as idiotic) is taken captive, Will and Casey set out to free him and the others - by friendly banter and occasional gunfights in the middle of over 200-mile-an-hour wind - because that makes sense.  Oh, and then they stop to pee.

No, seriously...they actually stop on the side of the road, during a huge hurricane, where they're being chased by robbers and when Will's brother's life hangs in the balance...to pee.  That's not just included in the script, but made it to filming, and somehow made it on the screen.  They stop...to take time...to pee.  There was four people who wrote this script, and they all agreed that this is a great thing to include.

So after they relive themselves and relieve some more bad guys (where they shoot out a ceiling window and cause them to fly off into the air, while they are supported by tethers that leave them dangling high in the sky like those wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men you see outside car dealerships and "Family Guy"), they stop back at Breeze's shop to partake in some fine dining...because now it's peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time...  This leads to a highly cerebral conversation between Will and Casey, where Casey guesses the peanut butter is Jiff, but Will retorts that he's a Skippy guy...but she does guess correctly that the jelly is Smuckers, so the girl knows her jelly.

The film continues in the usual way, with the best worst ending imaginable as three semis try to outrun the other side of the hurricane as they drive through the eye of it.  Again, more hilarity ensues in the deaths and the plain outlandish nature of it all, but after seeing the main characters pee and eat peanut butter and jelly in the middle of a hurricane, nothing can top the absurdity of that.

You wouldn't be surprised if you saw this on a late-night cable channel with no-name actors, but somehow, some way, it managed to get a big-screen debut.  While prestige films like "Phantom Thread" and "The Shape of Water" are only playing at theaters half an hour away, "The Hurricane Heist" somehow is shown at both local theaters, and I will never understand that.  The actors are famous - Toby Kebbell has done some amazing work in "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," Maggie Grace was great in "Lost," and Ryan Kwanten could still live off his "True Blood" income - and somehow still chose to star in this...their paychecks must be bigger than the haul they were trying to steal here.

Maybe their cost offset any production the film wanted, because the hurricane looked as terrible as you'd imagine, and immediate comparisons to "Sharknado" come to mind...I just waited for them to spring out of the storm.  Alas, they did not.  But I did spring out of my seat once the credits began, because I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

The Summary:
There are films that are so bad they're good, and in the case of "The Hurricane Heist," I wouldn't go as far to say that it's good in its awfulness, but it comes pretty close.

The Score: D-