5/21/2023 0 Comments Point break 2015Uninterested in competing on the bromance front, or even on the action-thriller front, this new Point Break often plays like an extreme-sports documentary with bits of narrative interstitials to carry us along. (“This is what chaos looks like!” yells Johnny’s FBI boss, played by Delroy Lindo, in one of the film’s many, presumably intentional, attempts at camp dialogue.) The FBI is interested in these guys because, along with their more metaphysical concerns, these daredevils like to “give back,” which, in their case, means robbing diamond-sorting operations and distributing the loot in the slums of Mumbai, or stealing and unleashing giant blocks of U.S. And the outlaws he’s infiltrating aren’t beach bums robbing banks to finance their anarchic lifestyle, but a group of hyperserious extreme sportsmen and ecowarriors determined to reach spiritual enlightenment by completing something called the Eight Ordeals, a series of gnomically named mystical-athletic tasks (“Birth of Sky,” “Awakening Earth,” “Master of Six Lives,” etc.) set forth by a long-deceased enviro-guru named Ozaki. This time, Luke Bracey’s FBI trainee Johnny Utah is a former motocross champ haunted by the death of his best friend in a riding accident years earlier. There have been lots of Point Break knockoffs, but there hasn’t been something actually called Point Break. No, this movie isn’t about characters we love, or high concepts, so much as it’s about #branding. And, having presumably seen the original Point Break, he surely understands that capturing the same lightning-in-a-bottle as that film is unlikely. The new film’s director, Ericson Core, was the cinematographer on the first Fast & Furious film, so he presumably knows he’s not exactly rediscovering a long-dormant goldmine here. That, after all, is how the Fast and the Furious series started, with Paul Walker as the aspiring agent taken in by Vin Diesel’s muscle-car outlaw tribe.Įnter Point Break 2015. That said, variations on Point Break do litter the cinematic landscape. Take Bigelow/Keanu/Swayze out of the equation, and you’re just left with the stupid idea. If the original Point Break itself is any good, it’s thanks to Bigelow’s vigorous direction and the breathless, almost romantic chemistry between Keanu Reeves’s hotheaded young FBI agent Johnny Utah and Patrick Swayze’s Zen bank-robber/beach bum/surf-god Bodhi. "Point"-less, indeed.There are about a million reasons why remaking Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 FBI-agent-goes-undercover-as-a-surfer classic is a bad idea, but let’s focus on the most obvious one. Ramirez can't match Patrick Swayze in the original Bracey doesn't even come close to Keanu Reeves, and Palmer looks like she's turned off her brain, emphasizing her cleavage over her talent. (It's pretty easy to predict when any of the characters is going to die.) There's no suspense plus, the dialogue is heavy on plot exposition and blatantly obvious statements, and pop music is awkwardly relied upon. Based on Kathryn Bigelow's terrific 1991 movie, the updated POINT BREAK copies the basic idea but strips away most of the original's nuance and feeling this one is unbendingly simple, with few tough decisions or emotional struggles.Įven with all the stunts - photographed with an annoyingly busy, roving camera - it feels like very little is actually at stake here. Like many remakes, this adventure yarn seems designed more like a soulless factory product, a calculated grab at some overseas profits, than anything anyone actually wanted to be involved with.
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