Point Break

MOVIE DETAILS

Rating: 7.3 out of 10
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Writer: Rick King, W. Peter Iliff
Star: Patrick Swayze, Keanu Reeves, Gary Busey
Genres: Action/Crime/Thriller
Release Date: July 12, 1991 (United States)

Point Break

The Buddhists refer to the bodhi tree as the tree under which one attains enlightenment. That’s not quite how it goes with Bodhi, the surfing bank robber of “Point Break,” who is more an existential hero than anything else although he’s so charismatic, a young FBI agent can’t help but fall in love with him. Or maybe it’s just Southern California that the agent falls for that land of surf and skydiving and weird karma, so irresistible to a square football hero from Ohio.

The hero, whose thankless name is Johnny Utah, is played by Keanu Reeves as a former Rose Bowl star with a bad knee who joins the FBI and gets sent to Los Angeles. The bureau is up against a gang responsible for a series of bank robberies like no one has ever seen before. They call themselves the Ex-Presidents; they wear masks of Nixon, Carter, Reagan and LBJ; they rob banks then they vanish.

Except once. Utah is teamed up with Pappas (Gary Busey), who thinks the robbers may be surfers because one has a tan line where his wedding ring should be and because some hair found at a crime scene was matted with sewage that could have come only from an offshore sewer pipe near some popular break. So Utah goes undercover as a surfer to try to crack the case.

This is such a California movie. The story I’ve just described could work fine for “The Naked Gun 3 1/2,” but “Point Break” takes it serious as death even after multiplying its absurdities by adding such developments as: A guy gets angry and jumps out of an airplane without any equipment at all; he free-falls until he catches up with another guy in midair who does have equipment then holds him at gunpoint until he gives him his parachute.

Patrick Swayze plays Bodhi as part mystic, part criminal and above all a surfer. From Pappas’ clues, it appears that he and his gang rob banks to support their surfing then move on when the seasons change. Utah bonds with them; he even falls in love with Bodhi’s ex-girlfriend (Lori Petty), while trying to put the case together. And then the story takes another turn down a very ingenious alley before winding up on a storm-swept beach in Australia.

“Point Break” is not the kind of movie where we should worry much about why the characters do what they do. For example: Once Utah knows that Bodhi knows, should they really go skydiving together let alone let Bodhi pack both chutes? Such questions are useless, since by now Utah is already too far under Bodhi’s spell where everything: free-falling, surfing, robbing banks is just a matter of catching the wave of life, looking for that endless ride.

For this content, Bigelow is a fascinating director. She wants her characters to live dangerously for philosophical reasons. They are not men of action but thought who choose action as an expression of their beliefs. This does something interesting to a character and so it makes the final confrontation in this movie as meaningful as that can be given admittedly preposterous material.

Bigelow and her team are also talented filmmakers. It features a footchase through the streets, yards, alleys, living rooms of Santa Monica; two skydiving sequences with virtuoso photography; strong chemistry between good and evil characters; an ominous brooding score by Mark Isham which underlines the mood” etcetera. Parodies invite themselves: “rookie agent goes undercover as surfer to catch bank robbers” (the plot of “Point Blank,” summarized). And yet somehow surprisingly effective!

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