"You Never Know What Mother Nature
Is Going To Throw At You."

"You'll Be Blown Away!"

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Review:

It’s the first review of 2005 and it’s once again a headlining show for Daniel in the natural disaster spectacle, Nature Unleashed: Tornado… or at least Tornado as it now seems to be known as.

Now this isn’t your average natural disaster story, no, this motion-picture is part of a little-known genre of ‘supernatural disaster’; a genre so little-known, that I just invented it! Tornado tells the tale of a young boy in Texas, Josh Pallady (though the DVD case will try to convince you that he’s Josh Barnaby, but don’t let that fool you, he’s a pure-bred Pallady through and through) who witnessed his storm-chasing father swept away at the hands of a vicious twister, leaving his son his sacred pendant.

Josh grows up to become a cameraman with a Swiss accent working for a local news-crew. He, along with an aspiring anchor-woman, Nickie Flynt (Ruth Platt), are sent to Romania to film a freedom delegation involving the Romanian government and the gypsy community there. Immediately after arriving, Josh meets the beautiful Irina (Anya Lahiri), a gypsy girl who prophesizes that he has powers within him to bring balance to all the good and evil in this world and that his pendent is in fact a divine gypsy amulet with mystical powers... the usual thing gypsies tend to tell you.

Josh learns that a cult of Satanists are planning to unleash the powers of evil to create a tornado that will wipe the gypsies and undoubtedly everyone else off the face of the planet. Bad news if you don’t happen to be Satanic! So rather than take a leap of faith, adorn a girlish purple robe and start worshiping the master of eternal darkness, Josh realizes he must aid his new found gypsy friends and follow the trail of this cult and stop them before it’s too late, armed with his amulet, that alone has the power to destroy the wind.

So far in his career, Daniel’s fought androids, dinosaurs, martial artists, super-powered ninjas, sorcerers, the Yakuza, helicopters, soldiers, a deadly virus, immortal Mongols and even a plank of wood (well, Keanu Reeves)… well now you can pull out your jotter-pad and add a tornado to that list too. Daniel’s career may only extend back 11 years, but that’s quite the substantial variety in foes the man has kicked the collective asses of in his history. How many natural disasters have you fought, Jean Claude Van Damme?

Sure, it’s more than a little silly, but credit to the writers for injecting some originality into a tornado movie. Whether it was necessary to super-impose evil cartoon eyes over the tornado during the film’s climactic end battle between man and wind, I leave open to debate, but it ensures the movie remains intriguing throughout as to what will happen next. 

On the acting front, the quality varies. Daniel does great here; he knows the subject-matter has to be taken with a grain-of-salt and accordingly performs with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. He unleashes his twin fists of fury in a couple of scuffles; first against a group of Satanic monks (and who can argue with the total annihilation of the Dark Lord's hooded servants?) and a second against the leader of the cult, which to me is conclusive evidence that Daniel Bernhardt is well 'arder than Satan (I'll bet 50p and your packed-lunch that Daniel could take him). 

British newcomer Anya Lahiri's character of Irina has been the subject of much discussion since her inexperience shines through her acting like a rupturing solar-flare, especially given that for her first ever motion-picture role, she's having to perform with an uncomfortable European accent. Ruth Platt isn't bad, though her attempts at the film's occasional deviations into comic-scripting fall flatter than a wet sausage on a railway line. Her as-convincing-as-a-monkey-in-a-man-suit American accent doesn't help matters either. Larry Day (or Larry Potter as he's chosen to be credited here) performs decently as the Romanian leader, Petras; an unremarkable but competent performance. 

However, for the most part, the film suffers from acting extremes; when the co-stars and extras aren't shamelessly over-acting they're embarrassingly under-acting which doesn't make for an easy viewing experience at times. You know that feeling when you go to a party and there's always one person moping in the corner grumbling that they're bored whilst across the room there's the borderline-alcoholic girl dancing on the table, screaming in drunken delight to the music as she knocks furniture over before collapsing in the punch-bowl? You don't feel comfortable in the company of either, but you've got no choice but to try and have a good time whilst you're there... this movie's sort of like that.

For a movie of this kind, it’s obviously going to rely heavily on special effects and sadly that’s one of this film’s greatest shortcomings. Combining conventional physical methods with a lot of low-budget CGI results in functional close-ups, but large-scale scenes suffer greatly from the film’s lack of finances. The tornado itself often appears as little more than a black swirling smear as it pursues our heroes in their car as they desperately attempt to outrun the dark spinning mass… though each internal view reveals a clearly empty road behind them. 

The film's biggest downfall however is undoubtedly the movie's climactic battle between Josh and the savage tornado itself. Instead of a back-and-forth fight between the divine forces of good against the devastating powers of pure evil... the movie just dribbles to a halt. Without even the slightest struggle, the battle is suddenly at an abrupt end as the movie sadistically indulges in a few outdated overlay techniques, some shameful attempts at comedy and the credits hit the screen faster than you can say 'Bill Paxton'. Films should have a beginning, a middle and an end; instead, much like Strike Force, this movie has a beginning, a middle... and then it just ends.

Interestingly, this is the only other movie of Daniel's besides The Matrix Reloaded that includes any special feature documentaries on the DVD; included here is a 'making of' feature that adds some insight into the film's creation and allows for an indulgence of self-glorifying hype that makes the movie sound a lot better than it is... but sadly Daniel himself doesn't get involved in any of the cast interviews.

Overall, this movie's not bad. It's not exactly all that good either, it fails in many areas and sadly it's certainly not one that will go down as a high-point in Daniel's career. It is however, refreshing to see him once again in the sole starring-role, since it's been a staggering 7 years since Daniel's last central lead spot in G2: Mortal Conquest. It was enjoyable in a curious way, in so far as it made me want to keep watching just to see where the movie would go, even though it never really developed. It's a campy cinematic curiosity that I walked away from feeling indifferent; nature wasn't really "unleashed", just really taken for a short walk to the park with a stop at the duck pond. It could have been a lot better, but I prefer to think it could have been a lot worse.