Before The Fast & The Furious franchise ditched such Earthly concepts as gravity and logic in favour of ludicrous super-charged set-pieces, director Rob Cohen’s 2001 original was a simple but effective Point Break-but-drag racing romp. Now he’s back for a slice of latter-day Fast mayhem with the breezily outlandish The Hurricane Heist, in which a group of hare-brained criminals plot to use a Category 5 storm (that’s the strongest) to pull off a $600 million cash-grab of government funds.
With its Ronseal title, hammy performances (Ralph Ineson is gloriously OTT as the lip-curling gang leader), outlandish beats (death by flying hubcap!), and grin-inducing so-dumb-they’re-dumb lines (“Did they teach you that in PhD school?”), The Hurricane Heist doesn’t take itself seriously. But this is no Sharknado — Cohen refrains from overloading on cheap-and-cheerful CGI, wisely choosing to batter his game cast with constant wind and rain machines on physical sets. Maggie Grace finally sheds the whiny brat typecasting from her Lost and Taken days with the amusingly-named Agent Corbyn, who makes for a capable, hard-as-nails heroine, even if the boys-own finale pushes her in disappointing damsel-in-distress territory. Kebbell and Kwanten breathe a little life into their cardboard cut-out heroes, but can’t spark comparable chemistry to Vin Diesel and Paul Walker.
Where The Hurricane Heist does deserve mention alongside the Fast series is its all-action finale — just as the film threatens to tip over into the bad kind of stupid (a ludicrous mall escape is a rare intrusion of truly risible CGI), it switches gears to hit the road for a triple-truck chase through the eye of the storm, cleanly staged with momentum and physical heft.
It’s pure nonsense, but meet it halfway and there’s plenty of dumb fun to be had. And considering how Fast & Furious took off, don’t bet against the final reel’s only-partly-joking sequel set-up. Bring on ‘2 Hurricane 2 Heist’.
