Anthony Ramos also stars in ‘Minari’ director Lee Isaac Chung’s meteorological thriller, set during a once-in-a-generation tornado season in Oklahoma.

One of the elements that gave Twister such a visceral charge back in 1996 was its balance of practical effects with CGI, during a transitional period when the latter was becoming more seamlessly integrated into live action. Jan de Bont’s propulsive direction and two appealing leads with great chemistry also helped. Arriving almost three decades later, Twisters gets the job done in terms of whipping up life-threatening tornadoes that leave a trail of wreckage in their wake. But the extent to which all this is conjured with a digital paintbox lessens the pulse-quickening awe of nature at its most destructive.

As a summer blockbuster, Twisters more or less meets the requirements, unleashing lots of fierce weather, putting a smart, attractive woman between two attractive men who seem to have very different priorities and emphasizing the stakes right up front by startling us in an extended prologue with significant losses.

The central character in Twisters is Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a physics whiz with an intuitive feel for the mutable power of tornadoes. She hopes to secure a research grant for her ambitious Ph.D. project to neutralize storms by absorbing the moisture trapped in their wind funnels. The movie opens with Kate and her crew of college-pal storm chasers seriously underestimating the tornado on which they aim to test their experiment, with tragic results.

Five years later, Kate has resettled in New York City, where she works as a meteorologist, still tracking weather patterns, only now from behind a desk. Her detachment from Oklahoma and her small-town farm roots is so decisive that her mother, Cathy (Maura Tierney), has told her daughter’s former colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos) that Kate no longer goes home.

Javi turns up in New York after a stint in the military as a data analyst, talking up a plan to get three-dimensional tornado scans using portable radar units. He has a highly qualified crew and the backing of a rich investor but needs Kate’s help to predict storm paths. She takes some persuading but eventually agrees to give him one week.

Powell’s charisma is turned way up in Tyler’s cocksure swagger and in the unapologetic egomania fed by his social media fame. His team’s merchandise includes T-shirts featuring his image over the slogan, “Not my first rodeo.” Still, with Tyler and his crew constantly yipping and hooting and hollering like Wild West cowboys, they initially are a tiresome bunch.

Only once Tyler dials down the showboating enough to get closer to Kate and show genuine respect for her knowledge do the principal characters foster much real involvement. Even then, when both Javi and Tyler’s attitudes toward chasing tornadoes are revealed to be more complex than they seem at first, there’s never much doubt which way Kate’s loyalties will swing. If you pour Glen Powell into skin-tight Western shirts and jeans, does anyone else really stand a chance?

There was a real opportunity here to contemporize the story by factoring climate change into the increasing frequency of violent storms tearing up America’s Tornado Alley. But Smith’s screenplay limits that to a glancing mention or two; shots of wind farms or an oil refinery being pummeled by a twister, adding fire to its elemental ferocity, speak more eloquently. The movie does score points, however, in its observation of the ways in which wealthy business opportunists profit from the tragedies of ordinary Americans.