《不懼風暴》場面宏大 敘事蒼白
When 'Twister' opened in 1996, I called it 'the loudest thing you're liable to hear without sticking your head inside a jet engine.' Given the evolution of sound systems since then, it's not surprising that 'Into the Storm' is much louder. What's remarkable about this long-belated and low-rent knockoff, however, is the velocity of its cheerful idiocy, the blithe vacuity of its narrative downtime between tornado touchdowns.
1996年影片《龍捲風》(Twister)上映的時候，我曾稱它是“在不把頭伸進飛機引擎的情況下，你能聽到的最大的聲音”。鑑於那之後音響系統的發展，《不懼風暴》(Into the Storm)的聲音更大就毫不意外了。不過，這部姍姍來遲、質量低劣的影片的驚人之處在於它的弱智搞笑情節之多，以及龍捲風來襲的空檔敘事的蒼白。
The main storm-chaser, a dislikable crackpot named Pete ( Matt Walsh ), courts disaster that he clearly deserves, though he does have an amusing epiphany. The vice principal of the local high school, Gary (Richard Armitage), fails to cancel outdoor graduation ceremonies in the face of ominous weather forecasts, though he succeeds at becoming a hero in the teeth of multiple storms. Sometimes the intentional silliness pays off, sometimes it falls flat. Still, the proof of this pudding is in the whooshing, and the digital effects-the animation, really-may well make the movie a hit. Everything gets sucked up into the vortex (even a fleet of 747s that unaccountably appear at the local airport), and every vortex is followed by a bigger one until Mother Nature finally remembers where she put sunshine and blue sky.
片中的主要風暴追逐者是一個名叫皮特(Pete)的令人厭惡的怪胎，由馬特・沃爾什(Matt Walsh)飾演。他喜歡追逐災難，這也算是求仁得仁，不過他確實擁有一種有趣的頓悟能力。儘管天氣預報稱將出現惡劣天氣，但理查德・阿米蒂奇(Richard Armitage)飾演的當地中學副校長加里(Gary)沒有取消室外畢業典禮，不過他成功地從多次風暴中僥倖逃生，成爲一位英雄。有時候，片中故意安排的弱智情節產生了效果，有時候則反響平平。不過，影片的亮點在壯觀的龍捲風，而數字效果（也就是動畫製作）則可能使該片大賣。龍捲風將所有東西都吸入其中（甚至是莫名其妙出現在當地機場的幾架波音747客機），每次龍捲風之後都有更大的龍捲風襲來，直到大自然終於記起把陽光和藍天放到了什麼地方。To give the film its full due, the people who made it-the writer, John Swetnam, and the director, Steven Quale-got wind of a genuine trend and ran with it. Everyone on screen is busy filming everyone else. It's a shakier-camera version of 'The Blair Witch Project' in the era of YouTube. When disaster strikes-and disaster keeps striking with numbing repetitiveness-it's always under the watchful eye of someone's cellphone that's in the process of shooting someone else shooting someone else. In this vision of immortality, nothing is ever lost unless it's deleted.
一言以蔽之，包括編劇約翰・斯韋特納姆(John Swetnam)和導演史蒂文・奎爾(Steven Quale)在內的影片製作者順應了以紀錄片手法拍攝影片的潮流。片中的每個人都在忙着拍攝別人。影片可以說是YouTube時代用晃得更加厲害的攝影機拍攝的《女巫布萊爾》(The Blair Witch Project)。當災難來臨時（而災難一再降臨，讓人都麻木了），總是會被正在用手機拍別人的人拍攝下來。在這種永生的幻境中，沒有什麼會丟失，除非是被刪掉了。
