The Hurricane Heist (2018)

“The Hurricane Heist” stars Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, and Ralph Ineson.  Released on March 9, 2018, the film is about a meteorologist and his allies who must prevent a group of robbers from stealing $600 million while surviving against a dangerous hurricane.

The film is directed by Rob Cohen, who also directed films such as The Fast and the Furious, xXx, and The Boy Next Door.  You’re probably wondering why I’m reviewing one of the lesser-known releases first instead of A Wrinkle in Time.  Well, it’s because I’ll be gone for a week to visit my sister in Texas and she wants to see the movie as well.  So, I want to make sure that I see as many of the less-popular films as I can before I leave.  With that said, let’s start things off with a heist film that takes place during the time where a dangerous hurricane is about to strike a small town.  That concept alone does sound crazy when you think about it, but does it translate into an enjoyable popcorn-muncher?

The most obvious suggestion I can use to describe something like this is that it’s a mixture between every heist film in history and the 1996 disaster film, “Twister”.  That’s pretty much all you need to know about this film.  While the concept alone offered some interesting possibilities, its execution was, unfortunately, anything but interesting.  When you have a director who has helmed a couple of entertaining action films in the past (most notably The Fast and the Furious), you would think that this could wind up being the first guilty pleasure of 2018, or even a small improvement over his last film, The Boy Next Door.  Nope, not even close.  The only good things I could find in the film were the performances and its passable work on the visuals.  Toby Kebbell leads the cast as a meteorologist who helps a Treasury agent (Grace) stop a team of tech hackers from pulling off the biggest heist of the century.  Their acting was a bit mediocre at times, even when they’re trying to force out a laugh or two, but Kebbell seems to be the only one who was able to carry this entire movie forward.  The visual effects in the film weren’t that special either, even though some of them were quite tolerable.  The visual quality is definitely something that you would find either on television or on a streaming service like Hulu, but for some reason, it doesn’t even come close to being a low-quality SyFy original film like Sharknado.  The story attempts to somehow focus on more than just stopping a bunch of thieves robbing a bank during a massive storm, especially the plot element that involves the meteorologist and his brother (played by Kwanten), but it felt like it struggled really hard to provide us some strong characters while trying to deliver some “guilty pleasure” type thrills in the process.  Speaking of which, the film offers a fair amount of violent sequences that involve guns, especially during the final act.  Most of these sequences were somehow enjoyable, but in terms of the story and the characters that were involved in these situations, they’re pretty bland and forgettable, except for the third act.  That third act alone was exactly what I was expecting.  Entertaining and dangerous.

Overall, “The Hurricane Heist” has a clever concept, but the desire of meeting its expectations aren’t as strong as the hurricane winds.  Despite some passable performances from the cast, its bearable visual effects, and an enjoyable third act, the film wasn’t able to brave against the devastating storm.  I was honestly hoping that it would be a “guilty pleasure” type of action film based on the marketing, but instead, it only managed to be an “eh” type of action film.  If you’re still interested in seeing it, I would suggest you either watch it at a matinee price or wait until it’s on a streaming service like Netflix.

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