This isn't what was meant by "get me two."
Everything is bigger in Warner Bros.'s new Point Break film: the stakes are higher, the moral is bigger, the action is better. But for all that Ericson Core's remake looks to expand the world of Kathryn Bigelow's 1991 film of the same name, it is lacking in the heart and charm that made Point Break a beloved property.
Luke Bracey stars as Johnny Utah, a motocross expert and YouTube sensation who gives up his life on the bike to become an FBI agent after a traumatic event happens to him. In an effort to prove himself and convince his superior that he's committed to the FBI, Utah jumps at an opportunity when he sees a connection between some eco-terrorists with a penchant for extreme sports and a Zen ideology popular in the extreme sports world.
Utah realizes that the eco-terrorists' heists coincide with the seemingly impossible Ozaki 8 challenge, through which the person who completes each trial will apparently achieve Nirvana. This eight ordeals concept is at the core of Point Break, though the film is never really consistent with it. Ultimately it's an excuse to do cool stunts around the world, and an excuse to parallel the surfer journey of Bodhi and Utah in the original. But by making the motivations of Bodhi so convoluted, Point Break fails to stick the pro-green point it seems to so earnestly be trying to make.
The FBI gives Utah a chance to test out his theory, and he determines that the next place the terrorists will be is at a huge wave off the coast of France. Despite being a motocross expert, Utah gets in the water without preparation (as he explains to Ray Winstone's Angelo Pappas, he's surfed before) and earns the attention and respect of Edgar Ramirez's Bodhi. It's from there that Point Break blows out its scale as Utah travels around the world with Bodhi and his gang to get on the inside as they perform the various ordeals in incredible vistas.
For the most part, the stunts performed in the film are real, and those extreme sports sequences are the best part of the movie. If Point Break couldn't get the chemistry between Utah and Bodhi better than the original film did and its bigger story is ultimately weaker than its predecessor, it can at least be said that the stunt sequences are much better. Each of the Ordeals is supposed to be a near-impossible feat, so watching the scenes where real people are snow boarding down incredibly steep mountains or flying wingsuits through dangerous valleys or swinging up the side of a massive cliff face keeps you on the edge of your seat. It's when the movie tries to rationalize why each of these sequences is important that the film falls apart, because even it seems self-aware that the story doesn't make much sense.
The stakes are relatively small in Bigelow's Point Break, with Bodhi and his gang robbing banks and surfing, and Johnny Utah out to stop them but getting in over his head. Everything is bigger in this new take on the story, and because of that even some of the characters question why exactly everything is larger-than-life. Here Bodhi is a criminal mastermind with all the money in the world at his disposal and a proficiency at multiple extreme sports. Point Break has an excuse to travel around the world by incorporating the Eight Ordeals mythology in, but turning Bodhi into a Robin Hood-like figure with a radical view on how he can save the entire world (yes, the stakes are really that high) makes him at first empathetic and later just a nutjob. Edgar Ramirez does the best he can with the character, and leaves the movie with a better performance than Bracey's Utah or Teresa Palmer's incredibly underwritten love interest Samsara.
While any remake looks to stand apart from the original property on its own merit, Point Break makes so many direct nods to its predecessor that it's disingenuous to consider them distinct from one another. It's why the movie would have been better off not being a "Point Break" remake at all; this feels like a movie meant to showcase the advances in extreme sports, so why not just make something else entirely new where the focus could be on that? The story is lacking in this film, but part of that is in the need to hit the key memorable moments that make this a Point Break movie. The Fast and the Furious franchise, which director Core has worked on as Director of Photography, can get away with being big and ridiculous (in a good way) because that's the world of that series; for Point Break, it's not the same.
Point Break spends so much time trying to convince the audience of its global stakes that its much more personal climax between Bodhi and Utah is lacking the emotional heft it needs. The movie focuses too much on its admittedly cool action set pieces but under develops its characters, causing pivotal character choices to feel out of left field. Even its take on the original film's final scene is so over-the-top that it's clear how much this movie missed the point on what made Point Break special.
The Verdict
Point Break doesn't capture what made the original film so special and beloved, opting for a series of incredible stunt set pieces strung together by a silly, over-the-top mythology. Edgar Ramirez offers the best performance of the movie as Bodhi, but the missing chemistry between him and Luke Bracey doesn't even get the bromance at the heart of the film right. Ultimately Point Break will disappoint fans of the original and not offer much for newcomers expecting more than a thrill ride.
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