Devil Winds (2003)

Sorry, this movie sucks

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Blistering performances.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Not only does nothing happen, nothing even almost happens. Theres a big tornado, everybody gets informed in time and no body dies. Some pretty funny bad acting though.

Adherence to current meteorological theory and good storm-chasing practices was not a hallmark of Twister. The science was atrocious and real storm chasers doing the bonehead things that our heroes did would've ended up smeared across vast stretches of the Great Plains. However, it more than made up for its factual flaws by being one hell of a great roller-coaster ride.And in comparison to 'Devil Winds', Twister is Citizen Kane, and a National Weather Service documentary to boot.It isn't so much that the science is bad in Devil Winds.It's non-existent to the point of being insulting to one's intelligence.It isn't bad enough that an allegedly professional meteorologist attempts escaping a poorly-CGI'd tornado by trying to out-run it. For the record: if one is caught on the road, drive at a right angle to the tornado, so that as quickly as possible it's not heading toward you anymore—it's passing behind you and moving away.But no. Not only does Our Hero™ drive directly away from the digital funnel cloud—which is about forty or fifty feet behind him at most—it follows him around an s-curve in the road.Let me repeat that: it *follows* the *curve* in the *road*.Upon reaching his destination, the tornado takes a twenty minute coffee break. It has been some fifteen meters behind him the whole time, and when he stops the car and gets out to protect an endangered building, the titular Devil Wind is suddenly nowhere to be seen. Why? Maybe it stopped off for a Slurpee. It would make as much sense as anything else in this movie.There's more, but it all seems so very irrelevant. It's all formulaic and predictable. It should come as no surprise that the building where the tornado's coffee break occurs is an Incredibly Dangerous Disease Storage Center at which the obligatory Estranged Offspring® of Our Hero™ works—and of which, of course, the boss is a crook.About the only cliché left out was having it built on an ancient Indian burial ground. Sheesh.This was first run on Pax (now ION), so unsurprisingly the Estranged Offspring® and Our Hero™ have by the end of the movie a Tearful Reconciliation© wherein All Is Forgiven (pat. pend.). And It couldn't have been more perfectly telegraphed by Samuel F.B. Morse himself.In short, Devil Winds is poorly thought out, poorly written, and poorly executed, and a bigger waste of a disc than anything outside of an AOL free trial.Save this for a MST3K Home Game.

It is a made for TV movie, in the genre that has been overdone to some extent. It does have some interesting moments, like the ride in the Hurricane Hunter. It is not a bad movie and certainly better than some of the late night, or early morning fair.I have certainly seen much worse. The actors made the best of the script given and yes, some of the footage would be better using older stock footage, buts lets all remember that this is a lower budget made for TV movie and is certainly not a waste of time. It is not a movie I would buy a copy of, but certainly better than a lot of what is out there.It has some interesting twist, no pun intended where it certainly diverges from Twister and Night of the Twisters.

I loved this movie. I thought the CGI's were good. Sometimes it looked like a real tornado was happening. I thought the actors did a great job with the content of the script. It is a made for television movie after all, not a blockbuster movie like Twister. I own this movie on DVD and love to watch it on lazy weekend afternoons. Personally, I thought Joe Lando, who played Pete Jensen, was fabulous. I loved the connection he had with his partner who chased tornadoes. And Nicole Eggert and Joe sparked some too. The special effects people did great with the budget they had. All in all, I think Devil Winds is really Cool. I recommend it for anyone who is interested in disaster type movies. It is no worse than any other budgeted television movie.