The three best kinds of movies are, in no particular order, disaster movies, heist movies, and movies from the director of The Fast and the Furious and xXx, so it is with great pleasure that I introduce all of you to The Hurricane Heist, an upcoming film that combines all three and, based on my extensive research, really exists.
First things first: The Hurricane Heist! Man oh man, what a title, right? I love it so much I want to write long handwritten letters to it in perfect cursive like a Civil War soldier sending a message home to his wife. There’s so much going on in just three words. Two words, really. There’s a hurricane and a heist. It raises the stakes dramatically. Other disaster movies now look charming by comparison. Like, yeah, we get it, Twister, there’s a big tornado in your movie. Cool. But what else do you got? Nothing? Just cows and debris flying around while Helen Hunt flees a funnel cloud in a pickup truck? Pfft. Pfffffftttttt. Please come back when you are serious.
The only teeny tiny complaint I have about it — so teeny, so tiny — is that it’s a little unclear. Are people pulling a heist during a hurricane? Are they pulling a legendary, near-impossible kind of heist called “the hurricane heist”? Are they… are they stealing an actual hurricane? We need clarity. We deserve clarity. Let’s get ourselves some. To the movie’s Wikipedia page:
A team of tech hackers embarks on a $600 million robbery from a coastal U.S. mint facility at the same time a disastrous Category 5 hurricane is set to strike. The remaining people left in the deserted beach town are a meteorologist, a Treasury agent and the meteorologist’s ex-Marine brother. Together they not only must survive the hurricane, but also stop the mastermind thieves from accomplishing the heist of the century.
And now, to the summary from Google:
The rural town of New Hope, Ala., has a pair of super-sized problems heading its way: There’s a hurricane bearing down on the Gulf coastline, and there’s a team of 30 well-armed mercenaries intent on looting the local treasury facility.
Well-armed hacker mercenaries are robbing half a billion dollars from the U.S. mint during a hurricane and our only hope is a team of heroes that includes an Alabama meteorologist. It’s like The Rock crossed with San Andreas crossed with Point Break, but with hackers and 150mph wind gusts. I am here for this. Lord Almighty, I am here for this. I hope the meteorologist, in addition to reading the radar and saying things like “But this is a Category 5 storm!” (even better when you know that Category 5 was the original title of the movie before some hero or team of heroes changed it to The Hurricane Heist), also gives the team tips on keeping your balance in strong winds, which are based entirely on years of being sent out to report during inclement weather. One ticket, please. In IMAX.
And it gets better. Oh boy, does it ever get better. At the risk of infringing on my colleague Vince Mancini’s territory, let’s discuss the official poster for the movie.
I count no fewer than five perfect things happening here.
ONE: It leads with “From the director of The Fast and the Furious and xXx,” right at the top. They are wasting no time in telling you what you’re getting in this movie. Although it would be funny to see that phrase at the top of a poster for, like, La La Land or something. Feel free to come up with your own examples. A fun game to play in your mind for a few minutes.
TWO: The tagline is the word “UNSTOPPABLE” in red capital letters, which raises an important question: What, exactly, is the unstoppable thing in question? The hurricane? Because… yeah, sure. I concur. You can’t stop a hurricane. You can’t stop a smaller storm either, for that matter. Not even a drizzle. I don’t even know how you would go about trying. Or is the heist the hackers are planning unstoppable? Where are they in the poster, if so? You know what? Don’t answer that. I want to be surprised.
THREE: The titular hurricane sure looks a lot like a tornado.
FOUR: It kind of looks like the guy in the very top left of the poster is bodysurfing the storm, which, given the pedigree here and the fact that Vin Diesel navigated a rainforest at extremely high speeds while riding snow skis in the latest xXx movie, is something we simply cannot rule out at this point.
FIVE: The “s” in “Heist” has been replaced with a dollar sign.
I’m so excited. I want to watch this movie right now. Everything about it makes me so happy, except for the part where it cannot possibly live up to what I am dreaming, but whatever. That’s a problem for another day. This is a time for celebration. Even without seeing a full official trailer for the movie (because one does not exist yet even though Google says the release date is in less than a month, which somehow makes me even more excited), I feel confident we can give it at least an 87 on the Geostorm scale, a thing I just invented that is based solely on the gut feeling I get about a weather-based movie upon learning a very small amount of information about it. This score is even more impressive when you consider that the Geostorm scale only goes up to 10.
Hurricane Heist, people.
Hurricane Heist!
