Critics often lament that worthy films released early in the year are too often forgotten during awards season, so let’s be very clear up front: For your Best of the Worst of 2018 consideration, in all categories, “The Hurricane Heist.”
A “Sharknado” movie minus the fish, this mess is somehow the work of director Rob Cohen, who could once upon a time muster up junky entertainments like “xXx” and the original “The Fast and the Furious.” Now he’s managed to outdo such hilarious recent efforts as “Alex Cross” and “The Boy Next Door” with a laughable caper wherein the good guys continually manage to thwart the bad guys through skillful manipulation of a Category 5 hurricane.
British actor Toby Kebbell, delivering a silly Southern accent so thick you could spread it on a Cracker Barrel biscuit, stars as Will, a master meteorologist returning to the Gulf Coast to chase Hurricane Tammy, which he knows in his gut will be the “storm of the century.” Sheriff Dixon (Ben Cross, another Brit twanging it up) has evacuated the town of Gulfport, where Will grew up. That explains why there are no extras milling about when a crew of crooks shows up to rob the local branch of the Treasury, where $600 million in old bills are waiting to be shredded.
Having apparently learned nothing from “Die Hard,” where all the henchmen have at least one identifying trait, screenwriters Jeff Dixon and Scott Windhauser make all the criminals interchangeable — with the noticeable exception of Sasha, played by Melissa Bolona, whose IMDB bio is an epic of free verse. Of course, the only reason Sasha stands out is that she snuck into the Treasury pretending to be a computer technician, despite the fact that she’s wearing a teal off-the-shoulder minidress with, as we will see later, a matching gun.
It’s up to Will and ATF agent Casey (Maggie Grace) and Will’s boozy brother Breeze (Ryan Kwanten) to save the day, mostly through absurd coincidences and sheer luck. One scene involves Will and Casey tethered to cables while bad guys are sucked up through the skylight of a mall, and I may have dreamt this one, but I swear there’s a scene where Will kills potential assailants by throwing hurricane-weaponized hubcaps at them.
In any event, Tammy is clearly playing favorites; when the winds come whipping through or a tsunami batters the Gulf Coast, it’s always the thieves who get swept away while Will and his comrades manage to hang on.
Will and Casey come with the kind of backstories that come pre-installed with Final Draft software; he’s obsessed with understanding twisters after one killed his daddy, and she’s a demoted Fed looking for redemption after a mistake cost a colleague his life. Perhaps there was a cop with one more week until retirement who got left on the cutting room floor, but that’s still pretty close to a Movie Cliché Bingo.
All of this culminates in an 18-wheeler chase that makes even less sense than the preceding scenes. But by this point, “The Hurricane Heist” has pummeled us with so many unconvincing CG storm clouds (Will sees skulls in them because backstory) and such an overbearing score by Lorne Balfe (“12 Strong”) – which must have worn out any number of kettledrums – that audiences will likely find themselves staring glassy-eyed or giggling maniacally.
Do not shelter yourself from the silliness of “The Hurricane Heist.” Put down your umbrella, throw your arms open wide and get soaked with its idiocy.
12 Worst Movies of 2017, From 'The Emoji Movie' to 'Baywatch' (Photos)
How great was 2017 for movies? Adam Sandler starred in a movie that made it to my Best List. How lousy was 2017 for movies? I had to cram a dozen titles into a 10 Worst roster.
10. "War Machine"
This would-be satire presumably had something to say about the hot mess that is the War on Terror, but between Brad Pitt's never-not-pulling-a-face performance and the screenplay's heavy-handed and excessively narrated attempts at political insight, the results were an unfunny mess that wasted a stellar cast.
Netflix
9. "Home Again"
Reese Witherspoon was the queen of the small screen this year with "Big Little Lies," but her cinematic outing in the directorial debut of Hallie Meyers-Shyer (whose only apparent qualification for the gig was being the offspring of two filmmakers) left her stranded in a cutesy and deadly dull tale of a newly separated mom falling for a brash young would-be director.
Open Road Films
8. "CHIPS" and "Baywatch"
The "Jump Street" movies made mining comedy out of a terrible old cop show look so easy that we got stuck with these two miserable failures that lacked laughs and a point of view. The funniest thing about "Baywatch" was when the producers tried to blame Rotten Tomatoes for the film's embarrassing opening-weekend numbers.
Warner Bros./Paramount
7. "The Last Face"
The road to hell has rarely been paved with such good intentions; director Sean Penn cast Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem as super-photogenic doctors falling in love and saving lives in African war zones, but the dialogue was so vapid and over-ripe that audiences giggled uncomfortably when they weren't averting their eyes from grotesque battle footage.
Saban Films
6. "Friend Request"
A teen witch torments a popular young college girl via social media in the kind of movie where we're supposed to be struck by the tragedy of the heroine's Facebook friend spiraling downward to zero. Your attention will go on a similar trajectory. It's the kind of horror movie where the comic relief isn't funny, but almost everything else is.
Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures
5. "Transformers: The Last Knight"
The makers of "King Arthur" should have sent a muffin basket to the "Last Knight" crew for making this latest giant-robot saga the year's dumbest movie partially set at Camelot. Otherwise, the only reason for this film to exist is so that we can finally hear Sir Anthony Hopkins summon his decades of theatrical training to pronounce the word "Megatron."
Paramount
4. "The Space Between Us" and "The Only Living Boy in New York"
If only 2016's dreadful "Collateral Beauty" had come out a few weeks later, screenwriter Allan Loeb could have scored a trifecta of mawkish dramas about sensitive boy-men who learn to love (and audiences who are shocked, shocked to learn in Act 3 that Character A and Character B have been secretly related all along).
STX Entertainment/Roadside Attractions
3. "The Emoji Movie"
There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of taking those faces in your phone and building a movie around them, but you'd actually have to make them into characters and give them a plot that mattered if you didn't want to wind up with this dreary and inane kiddie adventure that's less interesting than 90 minutes of watching someone else play Candy Crush Saga.
Sony Pictures Animation
2. "The Assignment"
Action legend Walter Hill turns gender-confirmation surgery into the stuff of leering exploitation in this seamy tale of a hitman given a woman's body against his will. Even if the treatment of trans issues weren't so repellent, this cheapie was poorly shot and clumsily edited, with actors like Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver doing their very worst.
Saban Films
1. "The Book of Henry"
Believe the hype: Colin Trevorrow's one-for-me follow-up to "Jurassic World" was the kind of embarrassment that made bad-movie lovers run to the theater. Henry dies midway through the movie -- trust me, it's not a spoiler, it's a selling point -- but still leaves really explicit instructions for his flighty mom to murder their abusive neighbor, the police commissioner. If James Franco wants to make a "Disaster Artist" sequel, he might start here.
Focus Features
Now be sure to check out Alonso Duralde's picks for the best movies of the year.
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TheWrap’s Best & Worst 2017: Boy geniuses, giant robots and poop emojis all had a role in the year’s lousiest films
How great was 2017 for movies? Adam Sandler starred in a movie that made it to my Best List. How lousy was 2017 for movies? I had to cram a dozen titles into a 10 Worst roster.