Brendon Jones
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Sameer Callahan
It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
Billie Morin
This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
Darin
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
godzillakingmonster
I first saw this film on SYFY (or Sci Fi as it was called) in 2010. I missed the first 2 minutes of the film but walked in on the totally not stolen scene from Twister (1996). This scene got me hooked to watch the rest of the movie. People may say "but it gets nuclear power plants so wrong" or that "the tornadoes don't look like tornadoes". These arguments fall flat. If the nuclear power plant was realistic, the movie would be done in about 5 minutes. And the other argument about the tornadoes falls flat. This was 2002! Twister (1996)'s tornadoes looked somewhat like tornadoes but this was a Hollywood blockbuster. Atomic Twister is a TV Movie by TBS. The tornadoes do change colour and shape but this is realistic. Tornadoes morph and change. Tornadoes look black from one side but white from another as seen in the shot where 2 (possibly 3) tornadoes are heading towards the nuclear plant. They are front lit and appear as a white colour. These same tornadoes from the back appear black. The CGI isn't bad at all but some shots look a bit strange like when Jake is helping Ashley out of her car and Campbell looks onto the tornado and the tornado is bearing close but the sky on the horizon is effected by the close tornado dirt effects. The actors in this are not terrible but not great. Sharon Lawrence pulls a good act and Mark Paul Gooselarr is always a win. Carl Lewis even appears in the film as a security guard. The rest of the cast is alright but nothing new. This film hasn't been on TV in ages and it's a real shame when crap like F6 Twister and Fire Twister are always on. The DVD was easy to find on eBay and Amazon have it too but the Amazon release is slowed down and has the ad breaks cut out leading to and ugly sound and poor quality. The Croatian Double DVD Pack (on eBay) is at the right speed and contains all the Copyright Info and ad breaks/fade to black is shown. So would I recommend this movie. Yes! Go watch it now. It's on DVD but can be found on YouTube. I wouldn't bank on it being on TV but keep a look out.
MartianOctocretr5
It's only meant to be just another TV fast food disaster of the week; made even cheaper than a Big Mac. But, come on. There's a whirl wind of plot contrivances, and all scientific accuracy gets swept up into the funnel cloud in the opening scene."It'll make Chernobyl look like a fire-cracker!" This is one of many woeful utterings by the hamburger cooks--I mean: power plant operators trying to prevent a melt-down. The supervisor can't decide if she wants to save the world, or find her dumb kid who wanders off (yes that tired routine). Fire hoses fill a melt-down pool or something. A trucker with needed supplies drives the wrong way. Tornadoes. And a cop who seems to be everywhere. The old diesel machine bit: comical.The cast try, but the script makes Chernobyl look like a fire-cracker. Still, good for some laughs.
enosshenk
Really, this "movie" deserves a 0, but a 1 is passable since most people will get a couple laughs out of the utter inanity of this dog.Honestly, I saw this piece of trash on a cable network a while back, and the entire plot is so laughable I only remember a few select hilariously bad scenes.First off, near the end of the flick the "heroes" need to find some diesel fuel to get the nuclear reactor going again. Amusingly, they run RIGHT PAST a diesel fire truck sitting abandoned, and the movie goes into whats supposed to be a suspenseful action scene of the heroes running a random diesel fuel truck off the highway to hijack his cargo, getting into a pointless gun battle in the process.This is only one of many ridiculously humorous scenes in this travesty of a movie, heres another one.A heroic red-shirt character needs to save the nuclear power plant, so he sacrifices himself by venturing into the most-protected holy-of-holies in the power plant to shut off some contaminated coolant. Oh....Wait...This heroic character is plainly just walking into a typical basement, with pipes on the cieling. Because of course, nuclear power plants run their contaminated coolant along the cieleing along with heating ducts, electrical cables, and other building infrastructure. Nooooo, no nuclear power plant separates contaminated pipes from regular old hot and cold water lines....As a disaster movie, this thing fits. The entire "film" is a disaster from the beginning to the end, but its laughably watchable in the terms of "Oh my god I cant believe someone made this piece of crap"
Christopher Bentley
...were my precise thoughts as 'Atomic Twister' began late last night on BBC 1. Long having been an aficionado of 'bad-film-ery' there was something grimly enticing about the prospect of something of the order of 'Storm Chasers: Revenge Of The Twister' combined with 'Atomic Train', in a late-night TV movie, Middle America in jeopardy sort of way and boy was I not disappointed. For me it wasn't so much the technical inaccuracies that stood out, since I don't claim to be a nuclear expert. It was the way in which at every turn if anything could go wrong it did, most spectacularly the satellite dish that was the station's lifeline to the outside world being blown clean off by one of those dratted twisters (UH OH!) The 'subtlety' of the offering was best summed up by our main protagonist's son and the babysitter indulging in a swift game of 'Twister' (get it?) Investigating this priceless slice of cinematic history on IMDb has incidentally brought up a fascinating piece of trivia - that Carl Lewis was born on the same day as Princess Diana, so I'm very thankful for having stumbled across 'Atomic Twister' for that 'factoid' alone.I'm giving it a '5' since that's as close as I can get to a 50:50 mixture of awful and excellent.