Point Break
starring Édgar Ramírez, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Clemens Schick, Matias Varela, Tobias Santelmann, Max Thieriot, Ray Winstone and Delroy Lindo
directed by Ericson Core
screenplay by Kurt Wimmer
Rating: ◊◊◊◊◊
Called “X-Mission” in Japan, this is a re-make of the 1991 movie Point Break (directed by Kathryn Bigelow, starring Patrick Swayze, Keanu Reeves and Gary Busey, screenplay by W. Peter Iliff). I don’t think the 1991 movie is dated enough that it already needs to be re-made.
In the original Point Break Reeves plays Johnny Utah, a former star college football player and FBI rookie who infiltrates a group of California surfers suspected of being a bank robbing gang dubbed the “Ex-Presidents” because they always wore masks of former U.S. presidents to disguise their faces during robberies. Johnny takes up surfing to ingratiate himself with the surfers.
The remake retains names. But in the new version the bank-robbing surfers have been changed into European extreme sportsmen and eco-warrior terrorists who turn to bank-robbing to finance their schemes which seem to be part environmental awareness demonstration, part Robin Hood-style robbing of the corrupt rich, and part Eastern religious, mystical existentialism. Become one with Mother Nature and then turn around and rob a bank with bloodthirsty violence. They repeatedly drop mysterious-sounding aphorisms which are, in fact, meaningless gobbledygook.
Why remake the film with extreme sports like giant wave surfing, mountain snowboarding, para-sailing, free diving, free climbing, mountain biking, skydiving, etc.? It’s calculated as base appeal to a new audience. The producers figure that rock climbing and snowboarding are popular now, so let’s re-make the movie to feature that. Not enough reason to remake it, I think.
I didn’t see any reason to have talents like Delroy Lindo and Ray Winstone in this film. They didn’t make it any better and were kind of useless. They didn’t fit in with the super-fit athleticism of extreme sports.