The Hurricane Heist is a 2018 thriller about thieves who attempt a massive heist against the U.S. Treasury as a Category 5 hurricane approaches one of its Mint facilities.
Not content to have the now tropey ‘heist’ movie lead its merry viewers along with inherent tension around pulling off a tricky caper, action adrenaline junkie Rob Cohen goes the extra mile and tosses in Mother Nature. The Hurricane Heist is at least bold-faced honest with its title, jamming together the two things this film is absolutely about, though this is a pretty vapid experience, stuffed to the rafters in nonsensical over-the-topness and very little else.
Opening in the past where a massive storm comes ashore in Alabama, it wreaks havoc on young brothers, Will and Breeze, killing their father and leaving them naturally a bit scarred for life. Twenty-five years later, Will (Toby Kebbell) is a meteorologist and finally patching things up with Breeze (Ryan Kwanten) after years on unfriendly terms. Another superstorm, this one called Tammy, is bound for the coast and while people scurry to evacuate and prepare, Treasury Agents Casey (Maggie Grace) and Perkins (Ralph Ineson) are duty bound to destroy 600 million dollars in old cash before it hits, though the shredder is on the fritz. What Casey doesn’t know though is that Perkins and his secret crew of masterminds are planning to steal it. As Casey calls on Breeze to help fix the machine, it all comes to a head as Tammy unleashes her fury, leading everyone in a fight for survival while desperate crooks will stop at nothing to get their payday.
It’s almost impossible to get even past the title of The Hurricane Heist and not think of Jan de Bont‘s 1996 Twister, a film that begins in similar fashion, though at least took a few breathers along the way to get ourselves hooked into the characters. That movie was decidedly silly but nonetheless entertaining. The Hurricane Heist however sidesteps silly and goes straight for absurd, starting with little Will looking up into the swirling chaotic clouds bearing down on him and actually seeing the face of the Devil, this supposedly being the catalyst for his future career. But beyond that, this film is essentially a few moving parts, throwing in a den of thieves, a noble female hero, and a Category 5 superstorm.
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By its very nature, The Hurricane Heist isn’t trying to be anything but what it is, slapping a Sharknado-like approach on the already ubiquitous heist genre. Perhaps the filmmakers (Cohen directed the original The Fast and the Furious) are sensing that audiences are happy to shell out billions to watch car caper movies year-after-year and thought that layering it all with deadly forces of nature a logical step in its evolution. However, the result is far more flair than function, the movie a collection of increasingly staged action sequences with zero heart.
That leaves the film a somewhat dulling ride as Cohen pounds us over the head with inconsequential setpieces that are nearly devoid of any authenticity, its players lost in the chaos. That’s not even conceding to the fact that the effects all look rather washed out, if you’ll forgive the analogy, and with empty performances left to carry us through, this ends up a tiresome watch. While some of it is surely meant to be Z-grade fun, with Cohen obviously trying to jump headfirst into wacky action, there is no joy in the effort and The Hurricane Heist ends up a gust rather than a gale.