Yet in these interactions-thanks to Bigelow’s sense for real, more pragmatic romance-the characters’ budding love is not syrupy and movie-like, but just awkward and funny enough. In his scenes with Utah’s love interest, Tyler (Lori Petty), Reeves is, however, more comfortable, perhaps because he was more used to playing romantic parts at the time. Ultimately, to those open to it, the effect is one of astonishment, hilarity, and awe. His affected line deliveries make evident the film’s artificiality-not to ruin it, but simply to amuse us to enjoy this performance, the viewer has to embrace its strangeness. Although Utah is an extremely high-strung, stuck-up young guy, this cannot fully account for Reeves’s often stilted and self-conscious acting. Witnessing Reeves’s performance is its own transcendental experience. This begins at the script level: Utah and his older partner Pappas (the precious Gary Busey) repeatedly decide to pursue armed criminals alone, without backup they miss the robbers’ takeover of a bank because Pappas wanted not one, but two meatball sandwiches all their nonsensical decisions make them more affecting and, dare I say, more human and believable. Point Break, on the other hand, plays fast and loose with these rules and places itself outside of this tradition-paradoxically achieving another kind of rawness. The idea of cinematic realism seems simple, but as filmmakers have sought to make their movies as pure as possible over the years, this striving has turned into an accepted collection of stylistic rules that a director or screenwriter must follow to achieve believability. But all these apparent filmmaking faux pas are in line with the film’s guiding principle: To really feel alive, one must let go of and transcend all rules and conventions. In a word, there’s a lot to love and to laugh at in Point Break.
(He also happens to be a former Rose Bowl–winning quarterback … obviously.) Both Johnny and Keanu Reeves, the actor who plays him, are astonishing in their choices. The man who somehow manages to learn to surf in a few weeks to infiltrate the robbers’ crew has the improbable and unforgettable name of Johnny Utah. The agents chasing these surfing criminals are some of the most incompetent policemen in the history of American cinema. The very concept of bank-robbing surfer dudes is as ridiculous on paper as it is on the screen it came from producer Rick King, who, while sitting on a beach, remembered an article he’d read about Los Angeles being the bank robbery capital of the USA. As spiritual as the surfers it portrays are, Point Break remains, at the same time, a deeply silly movie. Yet Point Break lingers not primarily because of its antiestablishment sentiment.
Ranking the Best Seven Action Scenes In ‘Point Break’ ‘Independence Day’ Is the Ultimate, All-Encompassing Sci-Fi Film The goal isn’t to go on holiday, but to make every day holy-a communion with nature, detached from a capitalist system. Their motivations, however, seem loftier than financial freedom: Money is great, but have you ever, to quote one of these beach boys, had “sex with gods”? The surfers are looking to feel the ultimate rush. In Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 classic Point Break, a group of devoted surfers don’t simply refuse to take note of the “Beach Closed” signs-they seek them out, robbing Los Angeles banks to fund their daredevil world tour.
But are we really solely defined by the way we spend our money, the cities we take selfies in, the meals and the clothes we can afford? Is that what being alive is all about? Many are determined to get back to “normal,” and some are already willing to attempt a restaurant outing or a day at the beach, whatever the potential risks. Locked up at home, seeing no one, going nowhere, thinking a lot more than usual about our premature or eventual end and the role we could have in that of other people-we are focusing on survival rather than on living. In times such as these, the question of what it means to feel alive has a way of cropping up. Welcome to The Ringer ’s Return to Summer Blockbuster Season, where we’ll feature different summer classics each week. 2020’s summer blockbuster season has been put on hold because of the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate the movies from the past that we flocked out of the sun and into air conditioning for.
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