Movie Review #358: "Point Break" (2015)

Movie: "Point Break"
Director: Ericson Core (OF COURSE that's his name)
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 54 minutes

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FBI trainee and former extreme sports competitor Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey) goes undercover to infiltrate a group of extreme athletes that have been committing thefts of massive amounts of money and valuables while performing extreme feats. Utah believes this group is pursuing a series of almost impossible tasks known as the Ozaki Eight, a series of trials that must be accomplished to honor nature and in order to achieve nirvana.

Oh, look! It's those flying squirrel suits a la "After Earth"!

The remake of "Point Break" bears little similarity to the original 1991 action crime film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, one BigJ and I both really, really like despite its overall cheesiness. This one's more like a quasi-remake, and we say this because it's really just a remake in name only. Sure, there is a character named Johnny 'Utah,' played here by Luke Bracey, and a character named Bodhi, played this time by Edgar Ramirez, and sure, some crimes are committed that are being investigated by the FBI, but that's about it for the similarities. It is almost to film's detriment that it shares a name with the 1991 movie because now, it goes beyond whether it is good or bad, but it will also be judged on how far it strayed from the source and whether or not it treated those original characters with respect. We will try and ignore this as much as possible (and as much as our love for the original wants us to) and just speak about this film on its own merits rather than in relation to the original. On its own, the "Point Break" remake is still bad, but we're ashamed to say it's not as bad as we thought it would be judging by the awful trailer theaters have been playing for ages. Don't judge a book by its cover? Well, not quite. Let's start with the easiest and worst part of the movie: the acting. Damn, is it terrible. Every single time he has been in a film we have seen, we mention that Luke Bracey cannot act. He is more one note than Keanu Reeves with less than half the charm, if that is even possible. Here, Bracey is not as derpy as usual, but rather, so ridiculously serious delivering the piss poor lines he is given by the makers of this film that it comes off as goofy rather than serious business. Edgar Ramirez isn't a terrible actor, he just doesn't have any good material to work with here. His character speaks in motivational poster-esque, faux deep quotes shrouded in mock spirituality for nearly 2 hours. Rather than come off as legitimate dialogue between two character who want to complete and impossible set of adventurous missions to achieve nirvana, it simply sounds canned, forced, and pedestrian, unbelievable at its best.

The script of this "Point Break" remake is bloody awful and disjointed, shoddily cut together with no organic flow to the narrative. While there does manage to be some awesome cinematography and camera shots of high peaks and tall waterfalls, again, pretty moving pictures don't make us forget the lack of a story and the missing elements of a good script. It's like filmmakers wanted so badly to have a bunch of extreme sports scenes mixed in with a forced crime story that it all came out as this lazy blob of X-Games b-reel cloaked in the type of speech you'd hear The Sphinx utter in "Mystery Men." The crime element just doesn't fit and even gets dropped early on in the movie, only to be wedged in at the end again. What we think happened was a producer found an original script about a group of people chasing nirvana through extreme sports on different continents and retooled it into a "Point Break" remake that should have never seen the light of day. There are definitely do some cool stunts, but we'd expect that from a movie that is almost (unnecessarily) 2 hours in length, but there is no tension or excitement because we don't care about any of the characters or what happens to them. The story itself is predictable, not because it's a remake, but because it's so cliché you automatically know what will happen before it happens on screen, literally down to the second! The one thing we will say is despite the laughable, implausible story, the horrendously bad dialogue, and the undeveloped characters, at least it wasn't totally boring and atrocious like we were expecting. Edgar Ramirez, and even Luke Bracey, since we know you're reading, y'all need better agents, because we know you're better than this.

My Rating: 4/10
BigJ's Rating: 4/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 10%
Do we recommend this movie: No.