Point Break ... What's the point?

POINT Break is the remake of the 1991 film of the same name starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick

Swayze. In the latter film, Reeves plays an FBI agent who infiltrates a gang of robber surfers headed by blond beach bum Swayze.
   The 2015 film is directed by Ericson Core, and blond Luke Bracey plays FBI agent Johnny Utah, a former motorcycle daredevil racer still hurting seven years after the death of his friend in a motorcycle accident. Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez plays Bodhi (the Swayze part).


   The film will treat viewers to a host of extreme sports, such as parachuting, snowboarding, rock climbing and gliding in a Batman-like suit (wingsuit flying) seen in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014). The editing and music are competent, but viewers will have seen all of this before.
  Thus, it falls on the relationship between Utah and Bodhi to prop up this film, and this is ultimately the film's failure.  Also, when Utah's boss (Delroy Lindo) quizzes him about his desire to make the cut as an agent, viewers won't sense the former's sincerity. Utah's more of a pretty boy with a ripped tattooed body and tan.
   Bodhi's ragtag extreme sports robbers are unusual. They break into a plane in mid-air and 'liberate' its contents of US dollars on a Mexican village. They break into a diamond vault in India and drop their takings on the slums below. Their reason: they want to return to the earth what they have taken from it.
  The robbers are also on a quest to perform eight death-defying stunts to honour a dead green warrior, but all the talk about saving the world and environment and coming between a whaling ship and whales, while noble, is far-fetched and uninteresting.

Luke Bracey's impressive body of work.

  This film wants to valorise these extreme athletes and their absurd values but it just ends up crashing into a ravine, just like a robber in the film. Funnily enough, the robbers and Utah light a big fire in memory of him later that night and ... go dancing in a party.
   The sole woman in the film, Samsara (Teresa Palmer), hooks up with Utah when he seeks to infiltrate the gang to link the members to the robberies. Samsara doesn't do much in the film, but she sure as hell looks great in bed and swimming in the ocean.
    There's also some mumbo-jumbo new age talk about "finding your path", or at least what Bodhi wants to instil in Utah. I could have told both of them to read up on Deepak Chopra.
  I didn't find myself interested in Utah and Bodhi's relationship. There was no tension in their talk, which was mostly bluster.

2 out of 5 stars