Clues ranging from chemical residues to a tan line noticed on CCTV suggests the perpetrators might be surfers, so Utah goes undercover to infiltrate their community. They’re assigned to the case of a prolific bank-robbing gang known as ‘The Ex-Presidents’ after the caricatured rubber masks they wear of Nixon, Reagan, etc. It’s Utah’s first day on the job as an FBI agent in California and he’s paired with a more experienced older agent, Pappas (Gary Busey), who resents him initially but inevitably becomes a pal. Peter Iliff set up the story briskly and without unnecessary complication. Reeves, looking decidedly androgynous, falls in love with the decidedly boyish Tyler (Lori Petty) and is clearly also falling into platonic love with pixie-like surfer Bodhi (Patrick Swayze).īigelow and screenwriter W. Not to mention the way it sneakily undermines the assumptions of the genre where gender’s concerned. McGinley), and such downright comic notions as Agent Utah (Keanu Reeves) dressed in regulation dark suit carrying a lurid surfboard under his arm, or a Nazi with the uber-right-wing name of Bunker Weiss. Consider its often testosterone-laden dialogue, its ridiculously irritable FBI director Harp (John C. Two sequences in particular (an FBI raid on a group of surf Nazis, and an extended chase in cars and on foot), were amongst the best of their kind in the early-1990s.īut at the same time, it’s also a parody of action movies. Point Break certainly is an action movie, perhaps an action movie par excellence, with all the super-rapid camera movement and big physical set pieces that implies. Decades later, however, the greater reputation of director Kathryn Bigelow-after Strange Days (1995), The Hurt Locker (2009), and Zero Dark Thirty (2012)-has made it ripe for reassessment, bringing to the fore not only Bigelow’s undoubted technical acumen but also its aesthetic and themes. Critics at the time tended to see Point Break as a heavy-on-action spectacle that was light on story and character.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |