The Hurricane Heist Movie Review

The Hurricane Heist (2018)

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Written by: Scott Windhauser and Jeff Dixon (screenplay by), Anthony Fingleton & Carlos Davis (story by)
Directed by: Rob Cohen
Starring: Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Ralph Ineson, Melissa Bolona
Rated: PG-13
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Plot
Thieves attempt a massive heist against the U.S. Treasury as a Category 5 hurricane approaches one of its Mint facilities in Alabama.

Verdict
This throws logic and physics out the window very quickly, but my biggest gripe is the lack of tension. The movie never attempts to set up the action at all, and there are plenty of credibility defying stunts that would benefit with some set up. While the characters are all underdeveloped even with well-used cliches, at least the movie is never boring.
Skip it.

Review
I assumed this was a low budget combination of Twister and The Fast and the Furious. It is, but with so many movies that share concepts and ideas, I'm surprised this movie didn't copy them. Just taking a few queues in creating tension for the action scenes would have helped tremendously. There's no reason tension couldn't have been included, the lack of it makes the action flat.

This starts with Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but it's the fake southern accents that really stand out. They aren't good and should have been abandoned. The first sequence is purely utilitarian, setting up the plight of two brothers, Breeze and Will. It's a sequence that should be imbued with at least some emotion, but the movie is devoid of emotion.
I knew as soon as one of the characters stepped outside into a hurricane that he wouldn't come back.

The movie is also concerned you'll miss not so subtle plot points. The hurricane manifests as a skull which represents the danger Will sees in it. That's not a good fit for this movie, I hoped it was a clue that this movie was a fantastical tale about an antagonistic, sentient hurricane that wants to take life. It is not, at all. Towards the end of the movie, a character delivers an obvious explanation in such a flat tone that she had to know the explanation was superfluous as the movie spells out what is obviously happening on screen. It's really an insult to the viewer that the movie thinks we can't figure out what's happening.

Toby Kebbell plays Will.

Will grew up to be a meteorologist with a weather team that works in some kind of fully decked out war room. Will drives a truck that is built like a tank with more tricks than the Batmobile. I don't know of any weather department that has that kind of funding. The devastating events in his life pushed Will to research hurricanes, while his brother is a nihilist repairman who cares about nothing.

Maggie Grace plays a cowboy cop.

Maggie Grace is a cowboy cop for the Treasury Department. She has some past frequently hinted to, but that plot line goes nowhere. She has a load of old money that must be shredded despite the impending hurricane. The treasury building is so well connected that everything can be controlled and diagnosed from a computer terminal. Fort Knox would be jealous. That sure makes things easy for the thieves.

One of the many problems is how on the nose everything is. The generator at the treasury building breaks so Breeze has to repair it, but Maggie Grace gives him a ride so Will has to pick him up and thus everyone is at one place. The only reason for these things to occur is to simply the beats of the plot.

Speaking of problems, the worst bit of dialog has to be Will's plea to Maggie Grace of "Do you trust me, I need you to trust me." There's just no reason for it, but that could be said about much of this movie. 

The people flailing in the air amidst that debris suffer no injuries at all.

There is a lot of plot armor in this. The movie could have easily picked off some bad guys just to drive home how dangerous this storm is. At one point Will and Maggie Grace are flailing in hurricane winds up in the air with ropes attached to nothing structural. The fact that none of the hundreds of objects in the air hit them defies all logic.
My biggest issue is when the wind is strong enough that cars are literally rolling down the street but none of the characters have any trouble walking in the same wind.

The best sequence in this movie is the tractor trailer chase towards the end. Sure it defies all logic, but it's kind of fun in the most ridiculous way possible. It also includes one of the best action alley-oops I've seen. In a split second Maggie Grace positions a clip in a gun, shoots and then kicks a bad guy into the air where Will then kicks him again out the door of a truck. I watched the scene twice because it is that wild. Everything that happens in the final scenes relies on impeccable timing to such a precise degree. How the storm destroys the bad guys' truck which is right next to the good guys' truck, I'll never know.