《不惧风暴》场面宏大 叙事苍白

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《龙卷风》(Twister)上映的时候，我曾称它是“在不把头伸进飞机引擎的情况下，你能听到的最大的声音”。鉴于那之后音响系统的发展，《不惧风暴》(Into the Storm)的声音更大就毫不意外了。不过，这部姗姗来迟、质量低劣的影片的惊人之处在于它的弱智搞笑情节之多，以及龙卷风来袭的空档叙事的苍白。

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.

片中的主要风暴追逐者是一个名叫皮特(Pete)的令人厌恶的怪胎，由马特・沃尔什(Matt Walsh)饰演。他喜欢追逐灾难，这也算是求仁得仁，不过他确实拥有一种有趣的顿悟能力。尽管天气预报称将出现恶劣天气，但理查德・阿米蒂奇(Richard Armitage)饰演的当地中学副校长加里(Gary)没有取消室外毕业典礼，不过他成功地从多次风暴中侥幸逃生，成为一位英雄。有时候，片中故意安排的弱智情节产生了效果，有时候则反响平平。不过，影片的亮点在壮观的龙卷风，而数字效果（也就是动画制作）则可能使该片大卖。龙卷风将所有东西都吸入其中（甚至是莫名其妙出现在当地机场的几架波音747客机），每次龙卷风之后都有更大的龙卷风袭来，直到大自然终于记起把阳光和蓝天放到了什么地方。

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，包括编剧约翰・斯韦特纳姆(John Swetnam)和导演史蒂文・奎尔(Steven Quale)在内的影片制作者顺应了以纪录片手法拍摄影片的潮流。片中的每个人都在忙着拍摄别人。影片可以说是YouTube时代用晃得更加厉害的摄影机拍摄的《女巫布莱尔》(The Blair Witch Project)。当灾难来临时（而灾难一再降临，让人都麻木了），总是会被正在用手机拍别人的人拍摄下来。在这种永生的幻境中，没有什么会丢失，除非是被删掉了。