This lame thriller opens with its best special effects — a spectacular twister — and goes downhill fast.
Devastated by his wife’s death in a Tulsa tornado, Peter Jensen (Joe Lando) has traded in his Oklahoma meteorological post for law enforcement in Portland, Oregon. Ten years later, the former storm chaser returns home to see his estranged daughter, Kara (Erica Parker), who was raised by her grandmother, graduate from college. Headstrong Kara is working for EDAC (the Environmental Disease and Control Agency), and resents her absentee dad's fatherly advice that rough weather may be imminent. As the tenth anniversary of the catastrophic tornado anniversary approaches, Jensen’s old co-worker, Robert Booker (Peter Graham Gaudreau), talks him into a weather-hunting flight; once aboard, the years melt away as Jensen is reminded of what he loved about stalking atmospheric anomalies. But where Jensen always relied on his instincts, the new breed of weathermen depend entirely on state-of-the-art equipment. So when Jensen speculates about the indicative value of inter-cloud lightning, the young guns fail to take him seriously. Kara, meanwhile, has started to wonder whether her workplace could withstand a serious buffeting by Mother Nature; if not, all those deadly viral strains with which she's working could become airborne. Her smarmy boss is too focused on fund-raising to worry about the weather and dismisses her concerns. After Jensen rescues a reporter and her cameraman from a freak lightning strike, Jensen’s theory is confirmed by the official weather predictors; his earlier concerns about EDAC's preparedness also prove prescient. Now Kara and her boyfriend must risk their lives to lock up the lethal vials in the basement vault. As the mother of all ill winds blows through town, Jensen must save those trapped in the EDAC building, including the inevitable group of grade-school kids on a class field trip.
leave a comment --Robert Pardi
