Film Appreciation hits the waves as Cody Hamman talks about one of his favorite action movies, 1991's Point Break.
Near Dark / Blue Steel director Kathryn Bigelow and The Terminator / Aliens director James Cameron weren’t a couple for very long. They met when she cast some Aliens actors in Near Dark in 1986, they got married in 1989, and she filed for divorce (irreconcilable differences) the month after Terminator 2 was released in 1991. But their brief relationship did involve a collaboration that gave us one of the coolest action movies ever made: Point Break, which was released the month before T2 reached theatres and two months before the divorce filing.
Point Break started as an idea that struck co-producer Rick King sometime in the 1980s. While relaxing on the beach after reading an article in the L.A. Weekly that named Los Angeles as the bank robbery capital of the United States, King thought up the concept of an FBI agent going undercover as a surfer – having to learn how to surf in the process – so he can catch a group of surfers who rob banks to fund their globe-trotting surf adventures. Writer W. Peter Iliff fleshed the idea out into a screenplay, and then that script floated around Hollywood for a little while. At one point, Ridley Scott was apparently considering it as a directorial project, with the likes of Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp, Val Kilmer, and Matthew Broderick(!) in the running for the lead role. But Scott moved on, and the script – which was titled Johnny Utah (after the lead character) and Riders on the Storm before it ended up being called Point Break – kept getting passed along. Until it reached the hands of Bigelow. She signed on to direct the movie and rewrote the script with her new husband James Cameron... but not enough to convince the Writers Guild that they deserved writing credits on the film. At least Cameron got an executive producer credit.
Against the studio’s wishes (and even to Cameron’s befuddlement), Bigelow insisted on casting Keanu Reeves, then known for arthouse movies and comedies, as our hero Johnny Utah. Although viewers have mocked some of Reeves’ line readings, he did prove to be a capable action star in this movie. And yet, oddly enough, when he was up for Speed three years later he once again had to overcome “Keanu Reeves is not an action star!” hurdles and prove people wrong.
Utah was an Ohio State football player until his sports days were brought to an end by a knee injury. So he joined the FBI, then requests a transfer to Los Angeles, bank robbery capital of the world. He’s partnered with longtime agent Angelo Pappas, played by Gary Busey in a very fun performance. Pappas has several memorable lines and moments, but it’s his ordering of two meatball sandwiches for lunch because he’s so hungry he could eat the ass out of a dead rhino at just 10:30am is something I can really relate to. But in addition to having a strong appetite, Pappas also has an interesting theory about a group who have been on a bank robbing spree in recent years.
This group is called the Ex-Presidents because they wear masks designed to look like former U.S. Presidents LBJ, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan during their robberies. They only hit banks in the summer, then disappear for the rest of the year. And Pappas believes that’s because they’re surfers, traveling on the money, going where the waves are, ripping off banks to finance their endless summer. They are excellent robbers, in and out of the banks in 90 seconds, sticking to cash drawers, never going for the vault, and never shooting anybody. But the law demands that they be stopped. And while Utah and Pappas’s stereotypical, angry, shouting superior, John C. McGinley as FBI Director Ben Harp takes every opportunity to berate them, they take their own approach to solving the case. Utah decides to go undercover as a surfer.
First, he has to learn to surf, which isn’t something we do much of in Ohio. And our hero actually does something pretty scummy to get surfing lessons from a girl named Tyler (Lori Petty). After looking her up and discovering that her parents were killed in a plane crash, Utah tells her a fake story about his parents dying in a car accident. That touches her heart and convinces her to teach him how to surf. Not a cool move on his part at all, and that lie will rightfully be thrown in his face later in the movie. Tyler was the perfect person to connect with, though, because she happens to be associated with the group of surfers who are secretly the bank-robbing Ex-Presidents.
As our “villain”, the head of the Ex-Presidents, is Patrick Swayze as Bodhi. And really, Bodhi isn’t a villain at all, until he’s pushed to do some unsavory things because Utah and his FBI associates are closing in on him. In his day-to-day, Bodhi is very Zen, dropping pearls of wisdom like “Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true” and “If you want the ultimate, you've got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. It's not tragic to die doing what you love.” He’s into the spiritual side of activities like surfing and skydiving, and looks down on the thrill-seekers who are only out to be radical. And he hates violence. In the Ex-Presidents crew with him are James LeGros as Roach, John Philbin as Nathanial, and Bojesse Christopher as Grommet. Bodhi is also associated with an unhinged character called Rosie, played by Lee Tergesen.
Bodhi and most of his crew are so cool, it takes about half of the movie’s 122 minute running time before Utah even begins to suspect them. Before that, the top suspects are a bunch of meth-dealing lunatics called Warchild, Bunker, Archbold, and Tone (Vincent Klyn, Chris Pedersen, Dave Olson, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis). Utah is so convinced that those guys are responsible for the robberies, he puts together a raid of their place that goes wrong, allowing for an excellent action sequence.
And once Utah turns his suspicions toward Bodhi and his pals, that opens the door for several more excellent action sequences. The whole second half of the movie is pretty well packed with action, from car chases to shootouts to a pair of skydiving sequences. And a famous foot chase that is rather reminiscent of a standout chase scene in the Coen Brothers classic Raising Arizona. The second skydiving scene is especially memorable and exciting because Utah jumps out of the plane without a parachute so he can catch up with Bodhi (who does have a parachute) and try to stop him from escaping.
Point Break blew my mind when I first saw it, rented on VHS when I was probably around 8 years old. And it works so well, it’s a movie I can still watch more than thirty years down the line and still get a lot of entertainment from. It’s well-written, well-cast, and features some great characters – and Bigelow is one hell of an action director. I wish we could get more movies like this from her, something that’s just a fun, exciting action flick, but for the last twenty years she has been focused on making more serious movies about real world events and issues. I’m not saying she hasn’t been making good movies – The Hurt Locker even won Best Picture and earned her a Best Director Oscar – just that I would like to see her make something more along the lines of Point Break again. And again.
Bigelow did get one more exceptional movie out of her relationship with Cameron. As part of the divorce, she negotiated that she would get to direct a movie from the list of projects Cameron had in development. She chose to direct the sci-fi thriller Strange Days from a screenplay he had written. That movie was released in 1995, and is definitely one that’s going to be covered here on Life Between Frames at some point.
But in the meantime, it’s highly recommended that you seek out Point Break and give it a viewing. Even if you’ve already seen it, it’s worth watching some more. To paraphrase Bodhi, “It’s one hundred percent pure adrenaline. Other guys snort for it, jab a vein for it... all you gotta do is watch this movie.”
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