Warning: Review contains spoilers for the movie. You have been warned!
Point Break is a remake of a 1991 movie of the same name. When it released it was met with generally negative reviews by critics. While domestically it only made $28 million off of a $105 million, it made up the loss by grossing $133.7 million worldwide. Despite hearing this, I wanted to see what this movie had to offer, almost entirely because of a crossover between the movie and the PC version of Payday 2.
Now I have not yet seen the 1991 version of the movie, so I don’t know how it compares to this one. All I have to go on is what I saw while watching this movie. I’m just going to judge this movie off of its own merits, not how worse or better it is than the previous version.
Point Break is a movie about an FBI agent candidate named Johnny Utah (Played by Luke Bracey), who believes a series of extreme sports related crimes are connected and the group behind them is attempting something known as the “Ozaki Eight.” The Ozaki Eight involves performing eight extreme sports feats that push you to your limit, along with some acts that give back to the Earth. In order to get evidence, he goes undercover, and is saved from drowning by a man named Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez), who happens to be the leader of the gang who are attempting the Ozaki Eight. Utah joins with them as they attempt their next two tasks, where despite one member dying, he still manages to bond with the group. However when the group tries to destroy a gold convoy as a means of “giving back,” Utah tells Bodhi he’s FBI and tries to get him not to do it. Bodhi destroys it anyway and after a short chase scene Bodhi leaves Utah behind.
Since the FBI froze Bodhi’s sponsor’s assets, he and the group must rob a bank. Utah and the police catch them, and the resulting shootout ends up killing two more members of the group, including Utah’s love interest. This leaves one other member besides Bodhi left. Utah figures out where the next ordeal will be, and heads there to intercept them. All three of them end up rock climbing with no safety beside a waterfall, where the other member of the group ends up falling and dying. With only Utah and Bodhi left, Utah thinks he has caught Bodhi, but Bodhi lets himself fall off the cliff and into the river, performing what should have been the final act of the Ozaki Eight. Unfortunately, when Bodhi saved Utah from drowning, he had to abandon the Ozaki Eight task he was working on at that moment, which was “Life of Water,” or surfboarding an incredibly dangerous wave.
Seventeen months after the instance at the waterfall, Utah finds Bodhi in the middle of the ocean attempting to do “Life of Water” again. He tries to get Bodhi to come with him and go to prison, but Bodhi says he has to finish the Ozaki Eight. Utah lets him, and Bodhi rides into the wave and disappears, while Utah flies back to his life as an FBI agent.
Point Break wasn’t really what I was expecting. I didn’t do that much research on it before watching it, so all I really knew going in was that it was a movie that had some heist action and extreme sports. I assumed that the movie would mostly be robbery and heists with extreme sports sections sewn in, instead of the other way around. The reason I assumed this was likely because of the aforementioned crossover between the movie and Payday 2. Since Payday 2 is a game that focuses on heists and robberies, I assumed the movie would have the same focus. The crossover between these two doesn’t really highlight the focus on extreme sports that the movie has.
I also felt like the relationship between Utah and Samsara was forced. It doesn’t really feel like Samsara does anything other than be a love interest for the main character. She’s given some backstory that’s mostly just her piggybacking off of Bodhi’s backstory, but other than that there’s not real reason for her to be in the group. She doesn’t participate in the Ozaki Eight and she doesn’t help them with the “giving back” part. The only things she does are hang out with the group, and when their assets are frozen, she helps with the heist (which really feels like just a way they used to kill her character off and not complicate further scenes). Overall, Utah and Samsara’s relationship feels like an unneeded romantic subplot that was only in the movie because other action movies have unneeded romantic subplots.
I don’t really recommend you watch this movie. While the stunts are really cool and visually amazing, the rest of the movie falls flat. The plot is bare bones and just feels lazy, and the characters seem rather artificial. The character of Bodhi was honestly the only one I was really even interested in. If you’re really into extreme sports movies, and can forgive and bad and clichéd plot, then maybe there’s something here for you, but otherwise I suggest you pass.
Critical Condition 