The new hipster version’s stars Luke Bracey and Edgar Ramirez aren’t going to make anyone forget Reeves and Swayze anytime soon, but Core has turned in a technically sturdy and serviceable action picture that will play well as counterprogramming during awards season.
Point Break wisely leans hard on its stellar visuals and location shooting and respectable 3D conversion, which should help generate equally respectable international returns anchored by China, where it opens. The original’s ’90s surf bums become extreme sports nuts and quaint bank robberies become complicated globe-spanning financial attacks designed to devastate markets — with a chaser of Robin Hood — in an overwritten and simultaneously underdeveloped plot.
This is Point Break 2.0’s first error. In overcomplicating the bandits’ motives, the film sets itself up for a fall. There’s too much mumbo-jumbo backstory about a dead eco-guru, the mythic Ozaki 8 ( a series of extreme sporting challenges) and the raid of Mother Earth/the poor and so on and so forth to leave room for character arcs. When Utah tries to surf a rare ocean mega-wave, he’s rescued by Bodhi ( Ramirez, Wrath of the Titans, Deliver Us from Evil) , and just like that, he’s deep undercover in the gang and knows he has his man, or men.