Movie Review 'Point Break': The remake is all stunts, no story

 

Director: Ericson Core

Cast: Édgar Ramírez, Luke Bracey, Ray Winstone, Teresa Palmer

 

Director Ericson Core pushes his audience to the breaking point with his new take on the classic 1991 action adventure flick, ‘Point Break’. The original film that starred the late Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves, had a well grounded story and plot, which this one threw out the window (like most of their action sequences). 

 

The film starts of in amchi Mumbai, where a group of extreme athletes lead by Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez) commits crimes of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. This catches the attention of the FBI, when a plane carrying millions of dollars is robbed mid-air, and their loot ‘rains down’ over a small village in Mexico. That’s where FBI trainee Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey) comes to the rescue. Johnny, a former extreme sports athlete himself, realizes that the death-defying crimes may have been committed by a team of extreme sports athletes seeking to complete a series of physical ordeals known as the ‘Ozaki 8’. 

 

Johnny successfully infiltrates the group, to later find out that his theory of the ‘8-fold path’ to extreme sports greatness was true. But that doesn’t end there, he learns that Bodhi and his excessively tattooed mates only commits those death-defying acts around the world, to ‘honor the earth’ as they go on a path of self and spiritual fulfillment. The cringe worthy dialogues can be forgotten (but not forgiven) with timely doses of hair-raising radical escapades every 15-minutes through the film.

 

The commendable thing about ‘Point Break’ (2015) is that it is most definitely an extreme sport extravaganza, in other words - the X-Games on the big screen. The film lumps up everything from surfing, wingsuit flying, snowboarding and rock climbing onto one adrenaline packed movie. Walking away from this one, you’d find a new respect for extreme sports athletes. Renounced athletes from the above mentioned fields, joined in and lent their expertise while shooting the stunt scenes.   

 

The story and acting may not be exactly up to the mark, but the cinematography and breathtaking action sequences make up a tiny bit for it. Core takes the themes of the original film and brings them to bear on the world of 2015. Like the new ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, this film does carry over the idea from the original— using some of the same characters, without much humor, humanity or emotional involvement.  If you can't afford to take that trip around the world and try out every extreme sport there is, ‘Point Break’ is an affordable alternative.

 

By the end of this film, you can be assured that you will have a few more ‘things to do’ on your bucket list.