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Film Review: The Hurricane Heist (2018) - Hurricane Game? It embodies What Job Responsibility is

Updated: Aug 4, 2021

#FilmReview #TheHurricaneHeist #影評 #十級風劫

FILE PHOTO: A Poster of THE HURRICANE HEIST (2018). ©Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures
FILE PHOTO: A Poster of THE HURRICANE HEIST (2018). ©Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures

This is the perfect genre film of 2018 I believe. Rob Cohen made this morally recommended real disaster master piece. Any bad disaster film is just to show disaster game which does not focus on conflicts among human protagonist and antagonists.

This category 5 hurricane is just a narrative device like zombies in George Romero's Dead series. True disaster film tells human conflicts under disaster not the monster-like disastrous phenomena itself.

We can say shark is not the antagonist of JAWS (1975) but the mayor and the entourage are the true antagonists in the human conflict. This is the correct point of view in terms of story-telling.

The Hurricane Heist mainly describes the heist related conflict among the U.S. Treasury officers and corrupted local police men during category 5 hurricane mess. Main drama is the Die Hard-like heist incident not the monster hurricane.

I can say that Armageddon(1998), Deep Impact (1998), Twister (1996) are just disaster games rather than serious human conflicts. This hurricane is equal with fictional function of any monsters in filmmaking. All of them are not antagonists but are devices to express human conflicts among human characters. Any defect of humanity is lack of true drama. The Hurricane Heist makes us realise what true antagonist should be.

Besides this important structural achievement, we also cannot ignore clear cinematic refrain among tight sequences in the end of Act 2 to Act 3 which are chase scenes from the federal bank to the highway with category 5 hurricane threatens them from their behind.

The corrupted policemen and Perkins' decision to betray their duty, Will and Casey's decision to be loyal to their duty are perfectly and consciously contrasted in the story structure. Decision making is the nature of plot and it embodies meaning of subtext in the entire cinematic expressions.

Moreover, this decision making is finally refrained after the escape from the hurricane. The protagonists, Will and Casey don't make a kind of decision to steal the federal bank money when they can do it like the failed villains. This is the structure. The screen writer highly conscious about the plotting that express meaning of entire context clearly.

I was really impressed with this quality work among other genre films in 2018! US film is the best of the bests!

Disaster film should not be a disaster game. Its main focus and content must be human conflicts, not a conflict with narrative device itself.

FILE PHOTO: A Steel of THE HURRICANE HEIST (2018). ©Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures
FILE PHOTO: A Still Image of THE HURRICANE HEIST (2018). ©Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures

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