A former extreme sports athlete, Johnny Utah, joins the FBI. While not even a full agent, he is sent to infiltrate a gang of extreme sports athletes who are attempting a series of death-defying challenges called the Ozaki 8. They use the challenges as a front to pull off daring robberies and are lead by the charismatic, fearless Bodhi. A young FBI agent infiltrates an extraordinary team of extreme sports athletes he suspects of masterminding a string of unprecedented, sophisticated corporate heists. I'm sorry, there must be tonnes of reviews out there that have used the 'pointless' pun. I couldn't help it. It's just too obvious. In case you didn't know, 'Point Break' is a classic action/cop movie of the nineties. Therefore, because of its 'classic' status, it was deemed 'remakeable' by our good friends - those wonderful Hollywood executives. Now, I like to think I'm not a 'remake snob' – there are arguments for remaking a film, normally if you have a fresh take on something, or if the film was made so long ago that people have practically forgotten the original. However, 'Point Break' was only made in the nineties and is still pretty dear to many people – namely me. I may be able to forgive this new version for anything other than a cynical cash-grab if the original source material was particularly outdated, but unfortunately the sad fact is that the (dare I say 'proper?') 'Point Break' still looks as good today as it ever did.<br/><br/>In case you don't know, both 'Point Breaks' are about a young FBI agent (Johnny Utah) who has to infiltrate a gang of bank robbers led by 'Bodhi' who indulge in extreme sports, in order to gain their trust and catch them, obviously. Whereas the original had Keanu Reeves playing our FBI hero and Patrick Swayze as the lead robber, the new one has er, actually I don't know either of them. I like to think I'm reasonably good with actors, but I've never seen either of these two in anything! But, I won't hold that against them. I'll save my disdain for the chemistry between pretty much everyone on screen. Everyone just seemed to be trying too hard to steer away from what we already know about the film, but never really achieving it. This new 'Point Break' incarnation is like a meteorite that's got hopelessly trapped in a planet's gravitational pull and is fighting against the odds in a losing battle to escape.<br/><br/>The new 'Point Break' does its best to try and create something new. The bank robbers don't just surf like they do in the original and it's set across multiple locations around the world, rather than just a single beach in America, but it's simply not enough. I've briefly touched upon the lack of chemistry between the lead characters, but this really becomes obvious when they try and throw in the obligatory 'love interest' in there for Johnny Utah the 2nd. It's truly painful. Almost as bad as watching (the usually awesome) Ray Winstone as Johnny's partner Angelo Pappas. It's just weird hearing these names again, only seeing different faces associated with them.<br/><br/>Believe it or not, I didn't hate the remake. It's a decent enough film and, if you're into anything from extreme sports to cops and robbers films, you'd probably get some entertainment out of it. But there's a MAJOR but. This only applies if you've never seen the original. If you've watched that you'll be crying out for a slice of Reeves and Swayze. So, if you haven't already seen the original, go and watch that – it's a true classic of its time which still holds up today. Let the remake be a message to Hollywood that we're not interested in seeing all our favourite movies redone just to make a quick buck. Imagine making a film about a woman that works as a cashier at a food court that has recently been opened inside an upscale jewelry store and calling it Breakfast at Tiffany's. Imagine making a film about a Russian immigrant that opens a pain meds clinic in the United States and calling it Doctor Zhivago. You get the idea. Neither of the ideas that I have listed here is inherently terrible, although neither one would probably be a masterpiece. The problem with these two ideas is that I have taken the title of a previously made film that was of a very high quality and a classic and grafted it onto my so-so film ideas. That is the problem with the 2015 "remake" of Point Break, a film released in 1991 about a group of extreme sports aficionados that finance their globetrotting pursuit of their hobby by robbing banks. That film was filled with imaginative storytelling and great action sequences and is the kind of film that you can watch over and over again.<br/><br/>Here's the thing. The 2015 version of Point Break is about a group of extreme sports aficionados that commit crimes not to finance their lifestyle, but as part of some high minded mumbo jumbo filled spiritual quest. In itself the 2015 film is not completely terrible, it just seems that way because the creators decided to graft the title of a really great and memorable film onto it and doomed it to being compared to a much better film. They should have called it Spirit Quest. I give it 4 out of 10 stars. Ericson Core’s Point Break strips the silly fun and relatively straight-ahead narrative from the original for a humorless, if photogenic spin on extreme crime.
Tanrain replied
372 weeks ago