Over the weekend, I watched Point Break for the five hundredth time (heavy spoilers below).
I watched it again partly out of a sense of ritual: it’s a film I have loved since childhood and which repays repeated viewings, and partly to steel myself for the utter horror of the deeply unpromising remake which will be desecrating our screens later this year.
For those who have yet to know (and for these sorry individuals, I feel only a strange and confusing mix of jealousy and pity), Point Break is the classic 1991 Keanu Reeves vehicle concerning itself with a group of LA surfers who rob banks on the side while disguised as former US presidents. It is precisely as wonderful as that description makes it sound.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, coming off the back of the wonderful vampires-on-fire-on-the-highway movie “Near Dark”, and the markedly less wonderful Jamie Lee Curtis sex thriller “Blue Steel”, the movie endured a somewhat tortured four year production, was originally helmed by Ridley Scott, and made Keanu Reeves a bona fide star.
The presence of Bigelow in the director’s chair lends the movie much of its distinctive charm. At it’s heart, when you strip away the » Continue Reading.