Point Break

I'll just say it out right, I have never seen the original Point Break. I have tried my best to discover all the classic action movies we've heard legends about in the halls of movies, but alas, I never got around to seeing the Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze reach their breaking point.

So when a remake of the movie came out in 2015, I really didn't have any strong feelings about it. All I knew was the name, the fact that these two were not Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, and the trailer.

So with a clear head and no alliance to the original 1991 film, what did I think of 2015's Point Break?

Well... it wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen?

Point Break follows the story of Johnny Utah (played by Luke Bracey). He is a former extreme athlete who, after an accident, leaves the world of extreme sports and wants to become an FBI agent. Before he officially becomes an agent, he needs to prove himself and he is brought in as a subject

matter expert to investigate a series of crimes being committed by a group of criminals that seem to be extreme athletes themselves.

Johnny finds himself embedded with this group led by their leader Bohdi (played by Edgar Ramirez). This group is trying to complete a series of extreme stunts involving the elements of the Earth. Its a little hard to explain, but basically this group has a series of events they need to complete and while doing it they are basically committing robberies and high stakes crimes while doing it.

It becomes a classic case of the cop getting too far in with the criminals and eventually there's always a question of what side he's on, are the bad guys really bad, who is he actually going to side with in the end?

Now the funny part is, while I haven't seen the original Point Break, I do know that they really started that trend of an undercover cop getting in too deep with the criminals he is investigating and by this point, the 2015 Point Break is really not doing anything new with it.

I will admit that the stunts done in this movie are pretty entertaining. Its cool seeing people skydiving and rock climbing and even the surfing is done very very well. The filming is also done very well because you're able to see things from the perspective of say the surf board, or some other really cool perspective. The issue is, you can see that kind of stuff on YouTube. We live in a world where GoPros and just videos in general have the ability to capture really cool stunts.

Like watching that is very similar to the experience you will have watching some of the stunts in Point Break. They are impressive for sure, but they don't make for a good movie.

Usually that is done by the characters and the story... and... well... they're not good.

I may be overstating this, but I feel I must repeat, I have not seen the original Point Break so I am not comparing these characters to Keanu Reeves or Patrick Swayze. I am basing my judgment off their performances (or lack there of) alone.

Now usually when a movie comes out and I don't know almost anybody in it, that either means one of two things. These are up and coming actors who have a bright future... or they're terrible and they were the only actors the studios could afford.

Unfortunately, these actors are not very good. And I'll start with Luke Bracey.

I'm realizing the majority of times I don't like a performance, its because of two contributing factors, the acting and the writing.

Now the writing this movie is by no means good. I never really felt like I got to know who Johnny Utah was because they were so focused on getting him undercover and because of that just made him the standard white heterosexual male protagonist. They try and play him off as this former extreme athlete but I never got the feeling that he was actually that kind of guy because he's a very white bread protagonist. And while a lot that that can be contributed to Bracey's wooden acting, at a certain point, the writers are to blame for not providing an interesting enough character.

But while the writing is not good, Bracey really doesn't do much to help the story along. He looks bored and not really invested in the story as much as he could be. I'm really not sure who is more to blame, the writers or Bracey in this circumstance. A part of me wants to say Bracey because I didn't hate the way this story unfolded, but at the same time, it wasn't good, plain and simple.

And then there's Bohdi.

Now I was going to say that both these gentlemen are good looking guys, they definitely probably have a background in modeling to explain their bad acting. But that's not true for either. Now for Bracey, he hasn't been in any good movies prior to this movie so that explains it for him, but Edgar Ramirez has been in some pretty big movies like The Bourne Ultimatum (small role), a highly praised miniseries called Carlos, and Zero Dark Thirty.

Now being in big movies doesn't necessarily mean you're a good actor, but it means you showed promise.

And if I had to choose between these two, I would say Edgar Ramirez is the better actor between the two. However, that doesn't really excuse the poor acting in this movie. However, in this case, I might blame this more on writing because this Bodhi is a major hippie douchebag.

This contributes to a lot of the problems I have with the story of this film, but Bodhi and his gang really aren't that interesting. Their end goal is to give back to the earth the way as a contribution to the gifts it gives them. They are a bunch of hippies that live in random cabins in the mountains and they're probably all vegans. And if you're a vegan, or a hippy, or someone that is saying, this sounds like a great way of living, I promise you, these guys make you guys look bad.

Now I get it, they're trying to make the motivations for this group a little deeper and a little bit more complex then just being guys who like money and rob banks, but for the majority of the movie, these guys really don't do anything wrong.

They're just out, doing extreme sports, being hippy fight club douchebags.

It would have been a lot more interesting if when Utah is hanging out with them, doing these extreme sports, they've been off committing crimes right under his nose, but that's not the case. Which once you're done being impressed by the stunts in this movie, it really becomes very slow. And this would be different if Bodhi and his team or even Johnny Utah were interesting characters, but they're not. They're all dark and bruting and there's not really any fun that you see in this movie.

And then there's this chick...

She literally shows up just to be the love interest for Johnny Utah. She's not a very good actress and she has very little consequence to the movie, I just wanted to mention her odd appearances throughout this movie that don't make much sense.

She shows up at the first party and she's just doing her own thing. There's nothing to say that she is connected with Bodhi or his gang. And then later she just shows up randomly and she's apparently with Bodhi and his group as their... groupy? And then her role expands and expands and it makes no sense whatsoever. This was a dumb character. Plain and simple.

Now, is this movie really as bad as I'm making it sound? No its not. Its a pretty sub-standard action crime flick and if you're just looking for something to turn your brain off and watch for the sake of watching, Point Break will not be a horrible experience. It sort of tried let's put it that way.

Like I said before, I haven't seen the original. I'm hoping that I will soon so I can do a full fledged review for it and then I can do the comparison. The point here is that that film, while it may or may not be good, it brought a certain entertainment and it seemed like people were just having fun with the 80's and 90's action tropes we've come to enjoy from films like this. That is a movie that you don't even have to see to know the tropes and quotes that come from it. I think its a feel that people have tried to recreate in recent years and it hasn't really worked as well. The point is, that movie will go down in history as one of the most entertaining action movies of the 90s. This movie tried to be incredibly serious and dark and will probably be forgotten by the end of this year.

But those are my thoughts on Point Break (2015). What did you think of it? Did it hold up to the original? Should I watch the original and give it a review? Comment and Discuss below. You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for movies (like Point Break) I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can also get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. So follow this connection. The first time the song Sail by Awolnation was used, it was used on some extreme sports video like Basejumping... I think. Point Break is about extreme sports. This is a video of funny cats set to the song Sail by Awolnation. See the connection? Enjoy!