Spoiler Alert:
I shall be ripping off The Hurricane Heist, lifting its lines and taking its time to judge if it’s a steal or highway robbery. So read on only if you’ve already seen The Hurricane Heist, or don’t plan to.
Watch THE HURRICANE HEIST here
0:00:43 The film opens on Hurricane Andrew, in Gulfport, Alabama, 1992. I don’t know Andrew, but I bet he’ll break wind.
0:01:14 A father driving in front of the storm has his two young sons with him in the front of his pickup truck. To stop them bickering, he tells them to review their (American) football plays. Then he tries a play of his own: outrunning Hurricane Andrew to get his balls to safety.
0:01:46 While avoiding a tree that’s fallen across the road, the father gets his truck stuck between a rock and a hard rain.
0:02:04
0:02:21 WTF!? Now that everyone’s safe in an abandoned home, the father decides to go back into the storm because he wants to give his sons a chance to be orphans.
0:02:52 The younger boy (Leonardo Dickens as Young Will) blames his older brother Breeze (Patrick McAuley) for making them late and causing them to be caught in the hurricane. Oh, brother!
0:03:31 The lads have to witness their father being squashed by a giant water tower vat. Dad is on a roll.
0:03:57 😂 After the storm tears the roof from the abandoned house, the boys are forced to watch a skull appear in the clouds. And I say ‘forced’ in the sense all of us are forced to watch these ridiculous special effects.
0:04:26 Jump to present day, where the National Weather Service is tracking a small wind that will soon become full blown.
0:05:51 They call adult Willy (Toby Kebbell), who now goes by Will and drives a super vehicle (Dominator) to study hurricanes. I think he should go by ‘Big Willy’.
0:05:57 In the tiny town of Gulfport, where everyone apparently has to drive through the town centre to evacuate, the sheriff is briefing his deputies saying he won’t have any deaths or looters on his watch. If his deputies spent more time on traffic and less on meetings, maybe the people would actually be able to leave town.
0:07:32
Connor: There’s a lot things you don’t know about me.
Lorry driver Connor Perkins (Ralph Ineson) informs his partner Casey Corbin (Maggie Grace) of his Irish ancestry. They’re stuck in traffic, as well, as they’re moving truckloads of money. The storm is coming, so they’d better haul cash.
0:08:12 Casey takes the driver’s seat and rams into a stopped SUV loaded with a family to make room for her turn. Looking at the screenshot [7:00], however, makes it clear she didn’t need to do this. She probably just likes running into people.
0:08:43 Casey takes her vehicle and leads the other two through a tobacco field shortcut. Thus, some of the crop went up in smoke and the rest will go. 🚬
0:08:58 Two suspicious characters are installing satellite equipment on a local radio tower. Suffice it to say their plans are up in the air.
Woman on tower: Ask your brother if he’s reading it.
Man on tower [speaking into a clip mic]: You reading this, Clem?
Man in van [looking at equipment]: Hold on, it’s searching. Keep trying, man.
Man on tower: All right, that should do it, bro.
There’s a right way and a wrong way to indicate two characters’ relationship through dialogue. The isn’t the right way.
0:10:12 The lorries arrive at the Department of Treasury – Gulfport Facility with more plants on their grill than Snoop Dog returning from Jamaica.
0:11:52
Casey: I hate old money. It’s greasy, it smells, it’s been up a thousand noses and buried in too many g-strings.
Perkins: You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Casey: Best part of this lame-ass job is watching it turn into confetti.
The only thing more heavy-handed than this exposition is a boxer carrying a preacher.
0:12:14 Casey is put out because the shredder is down so there’s a huge backup of nosey g-string money lying about. As a result, she has the money loaded into a super secure vault, which in film-lingo means a paper sack stapled shut.
0:13:18 Who do they let in to fix the shredder but a poorly dressed man with a strong foreign accent and a neck tattoo!? I’ve trusted politicians more than I’d trust this man.
0:13:37 Casey is so rude to the site manager (Christian Contreras as Randy Moreno) that they must’ve touched uglies at one point.
0:15:05 Casey Corbin FaceTimes some bloke (Atanas Srebrev as Morris) to get authorisation to change the vault code and to exchange even more exposition. “Hi, bloke, there’s $600,000,000 here and I regret a tragic mistake I made in the military before I was forced to take this job.”
0:15:48 Remember neck tattoo and his sidekick (Melissa Bolona as Sasha)? Here’s how subtle they are while inside the U.S. Treasury Office they’re currently robbing…
Sasha: Darling, this shredder program is so crusty.
Man: Yep, that’s what made shutting it down so easy.
0:16:36 The power is faulty, the phone’s dead and the mobiles aren’t working and yet the only people who are panicking are those who invested in this film.
0:17:10 On her way to pick up the generator repairman, Casey hides her tablet with the codes to the safe beneath a pile of dollars more shredded than Jake Gyllenhaal in Southpaw. Just kidding, nothing is that shredded.
0:18:23 Will goes to rescue his older brother (as we’re constantly reminded in the dialogue between rampant exchanges of “big bro” and “little bro”). Big Breeze (Ryan Kwanten), who is also a generator repairman, refuses to leave because he’s a hard-boiled southern alcoholic womaniser and the only thing that can make them go is prune juice in their beer.
0:21:12 Back at the money pit, the phone repair crew is denied entrance into the facility so they run as far amok as they can in a PG-13 film: they shoot all the guards with tranquiliser darts. 😬😂 WTF
0:22:37 Turns out Connor is a traitor and is in on the plan. He’s trading in his truck full of money for a truck full of money.
0:22:42 The infiltration of the building against an army of soldiers takes under 3 minutes. It seems the guards’ automatic machine guns with real bullets are powerless against darts from air guns. WTF
0:23:30
Connor [to Jaqi (Moyo Akandé), his coconspirator and girlfriend] And you said we couldn’t do this with zero casualties.
0:24:10 The two hackers open the office door where Moreno is hiding behind bulletproof glass.
Moreno: I should’ve known there was something hinky about you two.
What, by their clothes, accent or neck tattoos!? WTF
0:24:21 The criminals in their spew of exposition confess to breaking the shredder weeks ago so that the money would pile up. But they had to ‘gamble’ on the storm, which no doubt sounded something like, “Right, every detail of the robbery is planned down to the minute. Now let’s risk the rest of our lives on a hurricane arriving at that precise moment.” 🎲🎲
0:29:14 The criminals realise the code has changed so the hacker has 2 hours to hack the vault all over again while Connor tries to find Casey. I hope he finds her before the hacker cracks the code: I can’t bear two more hours of this torture.
0:31:28 Realising the Treasury is compromised, Breeze and Casey try to escape to get help, buy only Casey makes it. Apparently, Breeze’s plan of driving full speed into bollards was as stupid as it sounded.
0:32:34 Big Willy comes across Casey in a shootout in the town centre and rescues her in his hurricane mobile. It’s like Saving Willy in opposite world.
0:35:47 Will and Casey run to the local sheriff (Ben Cross as Sheriff Dixon) for assistance but he pulls a rifle on them…because he’s in on the robbery, as well! 😆 Next thing you know, we’re going to learn the whole town is also involved! There are so many people robbing the Treasury, each person’s cut is going to be $7.84 and a pet grooming Groupon.
0:36:51 Casey hears the sheriff talking to Connor and realises he’s the inside man. Now she understands what he meant when he said she had a lot to learn about him [Easter egg 🐣, see 7:32]. Well, there’s one fewer thing off the list.
0:37:02 Casey jumps for her discarded pistol and shoots the sheriff twice in his WTF (because he’s not even fazed by the bullets) so that she and Will can escape, but the sheriff can still follow her in a different car with a bank robber (Jimmy Walker as Xander). She’s as easy to follow as the plot of this movie.
0:38:08 During a shootout from moving vehicles in a hurricane where everyone’s aim is perfect and the robber’s gun magically starts shooting real bullets interested of tranq darts, Casey empties her revolver.
Casey: I’m out of bullets.
Will: How did that happen?
Casey: I shot them all.
Witty banter level: Teletubbies.
0:39:08 In order to lose the tail, Will slams on the brakes and shoots metal spikes into the road from the bottom of his hurricane vehicle so that his car is safe but the bad guys’ car is destroyed when it slams into the back of the vehicle. The train wreck that is this film is more dramatic.
0:44:34 I’ll spare you the sermon on man-made climate change, just like I wish they’d spared me.
0:45:12
Casey: Back in Utah I made a bad decision. Got somebody killed.
Girlfriend, no good decisions have ever been made in Utah.
0:45:48 Casey and Will decide to use the hurricane car’s winch to pull down a cellphone tower the robbers are using for communicating. Or maybe it just means the thieves will speak lower.
0:47:54
0:49:34 While Will is on the tower, two lorries driven by the robbers arrive. Casey shoots at them with a machine gun she stole from the crashed car at 39:08, killing Jaqi (Connors’ bae) and blowing up a petrol station. Shoot, girl!
0:51:14 The communication tower is down, which means the hackers are now unable to crack the code for the safe, and they were only one number away from doing so. Now the only crack they have is in the back of their knickers.
0:52:56 WTF!? While Casey unhooks the cable from the fallen tower, Will takes out the bad guys by throwing hubcaps like frisbees at them. He’s not the only one throwing something up.
0:54:57 Breeze tries to free the captured soldiers but is electrocuted while cutting the metal enclosure. He’s far more shocked than we are.
1:00:01 The sheriff and his posse approach Connor and reveal they’re double crossing the thieves. So Connor shoots the sheriff and his posse agree to switch sides. There’s more flip flopping here than Nemo on the pavement.
1:05:42 WTF!? 😆😂😆😂😆😂 I swear when I saw this in the cinema I laughed out loud. When the bad guys show up at the shopping mall to exchange Breeze for Casey, Will has a plan. He shoots a hole in the skylight and the air pressure sucks everyone out of the ceiling. Fortunately, Will and Casey are attached to ropes, so they just fly around the sky. The air pressure isn’t the only thing that sucks hard in this film.
1:10:32 Now that Will and Casey are safe and have abandoned Breeze in the shopping mall (because third wheel), they plan to blow up the transport trucks with a car bomb made with fertilizer. Of course they do, because the fertilizer, the plan and the entire film are full of shit.
1:11:39 The bad guys magically show up at the flower shop where the duo are stealing their bomb ingredients, but a flash flood comes through for them.
1:14:25 In the aftermath of the flood, the criminals find Casey floating on an air mattress and Breeze finds Will stranded atop the Dominator. It’s about time! Will hasn’t saved Casey in at least 10 minutes.
1:14:56
1:16:42 Once Casey uses her hidden laptop to open the vault door, Connor decides he wants revenge for Jaqi and goes all R-rated on Moreno.
1:18:48 The eye of the storm arrives so it’s nicer weather than Paris in the springtime. The brothers observe the lorries full of money leaving the depository, as the criminals’ plan is to drive in the middle of the eye of the hurricane to get away. I, however, predict they’re going to get it in the eye.
1:20:28 While they drive after the lorries, the brothers bond like sweat and leather in a gay orgy.
1:20:56
1:22:54 After Willy jumps from the car to the lorry, Breeze does the same, only Breeze has to do it with no one driving the vehicle! The stretch he makes is almost as long as this film.
1:23:13 WTF!? Breeze’s feet are being dragged on the street behind the truck moving at full speed and his shoes aren’t the least bit damaged? His shoes are tougher than any maths exam I’ve ever failed, and I’ve failed a lot.
1:25:34 Breeze and Will take control of the last lorry (driven by the tattooed hacker couple), then Will jumps onto the middle lorry, the one containing Casey. While he works his way to the cab, she gets in a fight with the bloke holding the pistol on her, causing the driver to swerve and nearly throw Will. That’s one way for her to get him off.
1:27:08 In a ballet of WTF, Casey shoots everybody and Will jumps into the driver’s seat and has a close call. If they’d wanted me to think this was cool, they should’ve had the confidence to do it in slo-mo.
1:27:38 I love how they think we’re blind enough not to notice their ‘motorway’ is clearly an airport tarmac.
1:28:15 We’re meant to believe they’re in the eye of a hurricane, but there’s nothing troubling in front of them? An eye is round, like a doughnut hole of calm in a storm, not a wall cloud with an attitude. WTF!?
1:30:24 The wind unlocks the back of the lorry, opens the doors, and takes out all the money. It’s better at stealing than the robbers! WTF!?
1:30:37
1:30:38 WTF!?
1:31:54 Breeze’s lorry breaks down so Will slows down to match his speed. The hurricane also slows down long enough for Breeze to be selfish and save himself by jumping into Will’s lorry, but then the hurricane speeds up and swallows the lorry with the tattooed hackers. Damn, the only thing I can do with wind is break it.
1:32:08 Remember when you were younger and tried to find shapes in clouds? A roaring skull appears in this one! WTF!? 😂😂😂
1:33:41 Turns out there was no hurricane after all because after driving 1 minute and 33 seconds, they’re in the middle of a beautiful afternoon. That storm took off faster than the clothes of a fleeing stripper.
Roll credits
My rewrite of the film in emojis: 🚚🏦🔫🌪🚚💰💰💸💸
Tally Ho’
- WTF!?’s: An incredible 25 disastrous ones!
- When to Follow: The only time this film should ever be seen by human eyes is if it’s being used as a drinking game in which each participant must race to drink a shot before the others when witnessing something unbelievable. The last one to do so has to drink twice. The game should be called Hurry-Can Shite and proper credit must be attributed to yours truly. Bottoms up, WTFers.
- Where’s This Found: Remember when you watched 2012, San Andreas, Geostorm, The Day After Tomorrow and you wished there had been more action? Well, Hurricane Heist is the first disaster film where you’ll wish there was less because what they have here is so cringe-worthy it feels like watching your parents have sex: yes, it’s action but my lord, no one should have to witness something that awful. The CGI is from the 1970s, before it existed, with rain that looks hand-drawn and special effects made with a Snapchat filter. There is enough WTF in this film to sink a small island and the only thing more predictable than the story is how much you’re gong to hate this film should you see it. Watch Twister again, instead. Out of a possible 10, I have 3 F’s to give.
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