If you want to enjoy an action film with cool actors, all time actors, brilliant cinematography and the sort of edginess that has a person giddy rather than embarrassed to be watching, look no further than Point Break. Patrick Swayze, Keanu Reeves and Gary Busey are like mailmen on Monday, they actually deliver!
In his younger days Keanu ruled (mocking his appearance as a star in Bill and Ted’s totally Excellent Adventure) as an action star. Speed made him a megastar, Chain Reaction caused him to take a step back but not before appearing alongside Morgan Freeman which certainly helped his career. As a gunslinging rebellious do-gooding youth, Keanu flourished. Arguably, Point Break is his best movie of all time. Gary Busey adds a degree of mentoring both in and outside of the set. Clearly Busey's wild side and ability to channel ultra-seriousness helped set the tone. Both FBI agents, the rookie Johnny Utah (Reeves) and his partner Agent Papas (Busey) make a formidable team to be reckoned with. Often mocked for his "radical" viewpoints, the inclusion of Agent Utah seemed an opportunity for validation for Agent Papas.
The plot becomes interesting when we discover the movie is really about a group of bank robbers known as the "Ex-Presidents". Of course we have Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in the mix. The robbers are nearly flawless; they never go for the big score in the vault, they take no longer than 90 seconds to do any given job, there have never been any casualties, and they always dispose of the getaway car. Agent Papas’ theory is they are surfers because of lab analysis indicating surf board wax left behind, because the locations of the banks they rob in relation to the surfing patterns, and because they have incredible tan lines for bank robbers!
At first Keanu’s difficult task had been infiltrating the surfing scene. As a former Heisman winning quarterback and a lawyer, surfing seemed the last choice for the upscale Utah. Nonetheless, whatever the FBI needs, the FBI gets. His first and softest target is a local female surfer with whom he falls in love by the film’s end. Through her he becomes acquainted with Patrick Swayze’s (Body) squad of goofball surfers who treat the waves as a spiritual ritual representing life itself. This leads to two of the coolest scenes in cinematographic history. The first is their bonfire football game, arguably a great audition for Reeves’ future role in The Replacements, and the midnight bluish crush surfing scene which is both kick-ass cool and romantic. Patrick Swayze plays a badass spiritualist unlike anybody else. This is his second best film, Dirty Dancing being his finest and most recognizable. Together their friendship is unrivaled and leads to exciting scenes…until Agent Utah discovers the scumbag surfers are drug addicts only, and not the bank robbing villains he expected. The plot thickens when he figures out his new best friends are indeed the Ex-Presidents.
The action unfolds dramatically. Reeves is forced to rob a bank with Swayze’s gang leading to two dead police officers and the death of Swayze’s brother. Reeves’ girlfriend is kidnapped leading to an exciting skydiving scene that causes the re-damaging of his knee and the tragic death of Agent Papas. The action is fast and furious here. The film ends with Agent Utah allowing Body to escape into the ocean to chase the 50 year storm, which coincidentally appeared at that precise moment. Then comes Reeves’ famous lines "he’s not coming back", repeated by dorks and movie lovers for decades. The movie ends with everyone’s lives in ruin or in death, quite befitting of such an intense movie. This is an ACTION movie. One that should still have set the standard.
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