Susan Granger’s review of “Point Break” (Warner Bros.)
Long before she won an Oscar, Kathryn Bigelow directed “Point Break” (1991), a bank robbery thriller involving California surfers, starring Keanu Reeves as FBI agent Johnny Utah and Patrick Swayze as the iconic hedonistic surfer/culprit. Its cultish popularity spawned the touring show “Point Break Live!”
This reimagined version is set in the world of extreme sports. The new Johnny Utah (Australian actor Luke Bracey) is a motocross racer who goes undercover after a personal tragedy for which he feels guilty.
Utah finds himself embedded with Bodhi (Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez), the ringleader of a mysterious, eco-activist group. They participate in a series of globetrotting extreme-sports Ordeals, known as the mythic Osaki Eight, supposedly devised by an Asian Zen mystic.
“We don’t live off the grid – we live on it, but on our own terms,” which means they support their lifestyle by robbing the rich to feed the poor, defying death to “honor the earth” in order to achieve Nirvana.
Working from a confusing, underdeveloped, emotionally insipid screenplay by Kurt Wimmer (“Total Recall,” “The Thomas Crown Affair”), director Ericson Core, best known as Director of Photography on “The Fast and The Furious,” concentrates on the spectacle, show-casing visually impressive stunts.
“Everything we did was authentic,” says Core. “We’ve done essentially no greenscreen or C.G.I. work at all.”
Along with gnarly surfing on the massive swells off Teahupo’o in Tahiti, there’s wingsuit flying on the Swiss Alps and dizzying free rock- climbing at Angel Falls in Venezuela. Reportedly, the budget reached $105 million, financed by Alcon and China’s DMG Entertainment.
What’s missing is humor, along with homoerotic bromance chemistry between Luke Bracey and Edgar Ramirez and Teresa Palmer’s underwritten love interest Samsara.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Point Break” is a disappointing 3 – another pointless remake.
