Point Break Luke Bracey, Edgar Ramirez, Teresa Palmer. Directed by Ericson Core. Rated PG-13. Opens Friday.
For some reason, Kathryn Bigelow’s dopey 1991 thriller Point Break, starring Keanu Reeves as an FBI agent who goes undercover with a group of surfing bank robbers (led by a zen Patrick Swayze), has become a beloved cult classic, with a campy stage adaptation and now a Hollywood remake, which manages to be even dumber than the original. Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) has gone on to become a serious, Oscar-winning filmmaker (which may account for some of her film’s enduring popularity), but new director Ericson Core doesn’t have the same pedigree. Core has worked primarily as a cinematographer, and his only previous feature as a director is the 2006 inspirational sports drama Invincible.
Core pulls double duty on the new Point Break, and his cinematography is miles ahead of his directing. Like the original, this version features young FBI agent Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey, making Reeves look like Laurence Olivier) infiltrating a group of dude-bros who commit major heists in between feats of athleticism. While the original criminals mainly stuck to surfing (with a bit of skydiving), this new gang is much more ambitious, focused on completing a series of eight extreme-sports challenges dreamed up by a legendary athlete/philosopher. Leading the way is dippy guru Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez), who turns his group’s elaborate criminal acts into statements about the way that the human race is totally destroying the Earth, man.
The more the movie focuses on Bodhi’s empty-headed philosophy, the less convincing it becomes. While Bigelow’s film hinged on the slightly homoerotic bond between Johnny and Bodhi (mitigated by a female love interest played by Lori Petty), Core and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer fail to build any genuine rapport between their versions of Johnny and Bodhi, and the woman who sort of comes between them (played by Teresa Palmer) is a complete non-entity. By the final act, the crimes have become an afterthought, supplanted by Bodhi’s quest to fulfill the eight badass (but, like, way meaningful) stunts.
The stunts themselves, performed by actual extreme athletes, are the movie’s only worthwhile elements, and some of them (especially a wing-suit glide through a lush canyon) are pretty amazing. But a compilation of genuine extreme-sports events would be just as amazing, and it wouldn’t have all the moronic plot developments and horrible acting (the forced re-creations of moments from the original are particularly bungled) getting in the way.
