Imagine the intense stunts from energy drink commercial or Youtube extreme sport montage while music from Mad Max blares on background. This is where the second coming of Point Break truly excels. When it hits just the right velocity, it’s bloody breathtaking. Unfortunately, the narrative is not only poor, it nearly sabotages the movie like a broken parachute.
Point Break is a bafflingly unsolicited remake of the 1991 cult classic of the same name. It is directed by Ericson Core, a good filmmaker who directed the 2006 Invincible, a film which is criminally underrated. When I found out that Point Break was being remade I shuddered in fear, but I when I learned that Core was directing the film, I immediately changed my tune, as I hold Invincible in such high regard, as it truly is an under appreciated film for the ages.
Point Break 2015 is grotesque.
I am not inherently adverse to remakes and reboots, and I am not at all a purist, I am perfectly fine with rebooting material and straying from source material if it serves the story well. What had happened here is that the studio has produced a garden variety action movie and slapped a name on it purely for the sake of brand recognition.
The film exceeds expectations in the sense that this a slickly produced action film with a completely rad soundtrack. The camera work, framing and editing leave everything on the proverbial field. There isn’t anything new going on here, but it’s produced in a professional manner and the action scenes are handled with extreme care.
And along comes the story, instead of our group of guys pulling bank jobs to fund adrenaline junkie lifestyles, the action men of 2015 are self aware crusaders, too cool for school, hipsters on a self imposed mission from God. Every character in this film is ball- kickingly annoying. The problem is that not one of the main characters are in possession of a redeemable quality and their motivations are completely nonsensical, they are all essentially unknowingly pseudo intellectuals.
If this movie had been titles virtually anything else I may have given it a 4 or 5 out of 10, rather than a three, though the unnecessarily and intentionally sanitized PG13 vibe completely disrupts any potential the film may have had in the first place.
If you like those 3 or 5 minute GoPro or Red Bull videos of people doing extreme sports then you will certainly like most of the movie as a lot of it is exactly that - and to be sure, those moments were pretty cool to watch and very well done.
No sir, I don’t like it.