Patrick Swayze is spinning in his grave. Sorry, I couldn’t find a more socially acceptable way to describe this travesty. Before I get started on the unnecessary remake of an awesome movie, I need to go off on a short rant.
Look, not all movies need to be remade. Sometimes, a movie is so friggen awesome the first time around, it could never be topped. Movies like Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, any of the Die Hards, etc. do not need remakes. If you must do a sequel, do a sequel. But when you remake an original, you’re pretty much saying one thing; “I think I can do this better.”
And on Point Break? No, you can’t.
The story is the same. FBI agent Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey) infiltrates teams of thrill seeking bank robbers run by Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez). Johnny works with the team through a series of stunts designed to gain their trust, before the inevitable showdown.
First time around? Shocking, compelling and psychologically gripping. This time around? An excuse to blow a couple million on stunts while missing the point of the original.
See, the point of the original was to make us feel like Johnny, as he slowly starts to admire Bodhi for his ‘life to the fullest’ outlook. We’re supposed to dig the fact that he kind of gets away with it. This time around, Bodhi’s some kind of hippy who uses his stunts as a way to ‘honor the earth’’’’
Whatever the hell that means.
And as a result, we kind of hate the character, rather than just want to hate-screw him.
The director clearly wanted to up the ante on action, and as a result, lost the awesome story and the thing that made this movie good. It was unique in that Bodhi is an anti-hero. The fact that they jumped out of a damn plane didn’t make the movie special. It was the characters themselves.
In this one, they give us two subpar actors who aren’t that memorable and look homeless, though not in the cool, hipster way, but in the dirty “I Don’t Shave” way. These guys can’t act and you know that’s bad when I can actually say Keanu “One Facial Expression” Reeves did it better.
But he did.
They tried really, really hard to make it thrilling, but they completely missed the charisma. I will say the action scenes looked good, but as I didn’t really care about either character, there was no tension for me. Just one loud scene after another.,
And there’s a lot of loud scenes. About 2 hours of them, in fact. Can someone explain to me why these guys took nearly the same amount of time to make this movie, while making it feel about 4 hours longer?
It’s exhaustion with no investment. The makers decided to focus on their extreme sports expertise while not spending a lot of time working the script. So if you’re considering Point Break, might I suggest you go back to 1991 and get the original? Because this one is not worth the watch.
WE GAVE IT: 2 Stars – Watch the Official Trailer and Official Movie Poster below!
