POINT BREAK (2016) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

point break (2016) movie

Genre               |   Action

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   114 minutes

Released         |   1 January 2016

cast

Luke Bracey as Utah
Edgar Ramirez as Bodhi
Ray Winstone as Pappas
​Teresa Palmer as Samsara

director

Ericson Core

writer

​Kurt Wimmer    ...    (screenplay)
 
Rick King    ...    (story) &
W. Peter Iliff    ...    (story) and
Kurt Wimmer    ...    (story)

cinematographer

Ericson Core

music

Junkie XL

film editor

​John Duffy    
Gerald B. Greenberg    
Thom Noble

---

box office result

Worldwide             $ 133,718,711     ​ 

Australia                 $​​3,997,454

North America        $​28,782,481      

---

the best dialogue

Several characters: Brother.

Pappas: Have you ever surfed
Johnny Utah: Yeah
Pappas: [points to the squall] But have you ever surfed anything like 'that'

Pappas: I don't think you noticed or not but what went down was a crime

---

POINT BREAK (2016) IMAGES

POINT BREAK (2016) STORY SYNOPSIS

A young FBI agent infiltrates an extraordinary team of extreme sports athletes he suspects of masterminding a string of unprecedented, sophisticated corporate heists. Deep undercover, and with his life in danger, he strives to prove these athletes are the architects of the mind-boggling crimes that are devastating the world's financial markets.

POINT BREAK (2016) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 1 January 2016
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐

The key to telling any story successfully is to make a point. Given the word “Point” is featured in the title, it’s a little surprising that Ericson Core’s reimagining of the 1991 Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze action film fails to make any point and, for that matter, much sense. Instead, much of the movie plays like a Warren Miller documentary (sans his famous narrations), where coherent storytelling is hastily moved aside in favour of extended action sequences that serve little to no purpose. With only a passing resemblance to Kathryn Bigelow’s movie, this version of POINT BREAK could have been called just about anything and a cynic may take the view that the only reason this new film bares the same moniker came about through a shameless attempt to cash-in on the nostalgic following that the first film has developed over the last 24 years.

The story opens with up and coming dirtbike champion Johnny Utah (Australian actor Luke Bracey) giving up on his dreams after the death of his friend Jeff (Max Thieriot) while attempting one of the most ridiculous stunts ever seen in a film. Jumping seven years forward, the story picks-up with Utah being reluctantly accepted into the FBI training program. There’s no real explanation as to how or why Utah decided to join the FBI, but Senior Agent Hall (Delroy Lindo) is not that thrilled by his presence. Only after Utah makes a spectacular cognitive connection in a series of unexplained cases, does Hall decide to give Utah a chance. Utah believes three crimes in three different countries have been committed by the same group, whose members seem to display the same level of elite athleticism as Utah and appear to be following a pattern of behaviour based on a series of death-defying feats in exhortation of Mother Nature’s goodness. What follows defies the rational acceptance in the suspension of disbelief within a fictional story, as Utah, who has no prior law enforcement experience, is sent overseas by Hall to investigate a paper-thin lead even after senior FBI officials have rejected Utah’s theory. It’s just a little bit too much of a narrative leap to swallow.

In a piece of detective work worthy of the great Sherlock Holmes, Utah, with the help of Ray Winstone’s Pappas, manages to locate the suspects he’s after almost immediately; managing to “drop-in” on the group’s leader Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez) while surfing some of the biggest waves in history. Once Utah ingratiates himself with Bodhi and his “gang”, the viewer is forced to endure a combination of never-ending macho-man antics that just don’t make sense. To make matters worse, writer Kurt Wimmer (responsible for the similarly woeful 2012 TOTAL RECALL remake) attempts to characterise Bodhi as a cross between David Suzuki and Robin Hood, where Mother Nature’s awesomeness has to be rewarded with some kind of criminal act that puts lives at risk for no good reason. Nowhere does this pointlessness hit home better when Italian authorities (and for some reason, members of the FBI) surround the “Bodhites” in the midst of them pulling a bank heist and, in the space of a couple of minutes, the cast is almost halved in a hail of gunfire!

Surprisingly, given the lack of coherent story, most of the actors manage to extract something out of the script to make their character interesting. Luke Bracey does as much as he can with Utah and any of the character’s shorth-comings  are a result of Wimmer’s poor dialogue writing. Edgar Ramirez does his usual suave South American accent, but, despite attempts to give the character some kind of motivation as to why he does what he does, there’s nothing going on behind his eyes. Ray Winstone and Delroy Lindo pop-up throughout the course of the film and their presence provides a welcome relief even if their characters are convoluted cliches of just about every “Law Enforcement” type that’s ever been committed to film. Teresa Palmer as Samsara, the film’s hippy-dippy Earth Mother character, is the least impressive of the performances and her inclusion is a poor substitute for Lori Petty’s Tyler from the 1991 film. Director Ericson Core, who also puts his experience as Cinematographer to use, captures all the stunt action with multiple camera coverage from all vantage points, but it’s not enough to keep people entertained for the film’s 114 minute running time. The absence of well-thought through plot and action for the sake of action makes the film’s tagline of “Find Your Breaking Point” take on a meaning that POINT BREAK’s producers may not have intended.

digital updates delivered

facebook

instagram