POINTLESS BREAK
Remake lacking in depth
At some point in the nearish future, it’s going to become socially acceptable, if not outright encouraged, for two otherwise powerfully heterosexual men to resolve their feelings for each other with a night or two of intense and probably slightly violent lovemaking.
When we reach this point — let’s call it, I don’t know, a break point — most of our action movies are going to be resolved in about 20 minutes.
It’s about 20 or so minutes into this remake of one of the ultimate homoerotic brodowns, Point Break, that our new Utah (Luke Bracey) and our new Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez) bare-knuckle box each other. At this point, Utah has already been saved from almost drowning while riding a righteous wave by Bodhi, and got just a taste of his freewheeling, Earth-loving philosophy.
Clearly hypnotized by the thought of more adventures with the man — and I guess technically also an FBI agent who’s supposed to be undercover investigating a team of high-adrenalin thieves, of which obviously Bodhi is the leader — he follows him first to the fist-fights and then to the top of a mountain for an jump in one of those flying squirrel suits.
Kissing would have been quicker and easier, though it also would have robbed Point Break the remake of its point of being remade, which is to gawk lustily not just at the bromance but the feats of extreme derring-do they pull off.
Graduating up from the righteous surfer-philosophers of the Reeves/Swayze era, these criminals are generic extreme athletes, taking on challenges of every stripe, from surfing the biggest waves to climbing the gnarliest rocks to snowboarding the baddest mountains. Utah, a former extreme sporto who gave it all up after his friend died during a trick, figures out they’re on a quest involving eight wicked stunts that are meant to achieve a sort of one-with-earth Nirvana, and their crimes against the capitalist pigs who are destroying the Earth are their way of paying it back from these awesome opportunities.
If that sounds ridiculous in your own head, just imagine it being said out loud.
To that end, Ramirez is an exceptional Bodhi, radiating the same dreamy-violent sexual charisma he captured as an idealistic terrorist in Carlos. It says something that not even someone with his magnetic physicality can make a single one of these conversations seem logically or psychologically sensible.
Luckily, director Ericson Core keeps the talking to a minimum, giving us gorgeous, sweeping shots of Bodhi and Utah flying (occasionally literally) through some of the most impressive scenery on Earth. If there were even one solid human connection to be had anywhere else, this might be the kind of film that could win converts to the school of better living through extreme sports. Sadly, after that fist fight, we don’t even get an adequate amount of sexual tension: Some mountains are too hard for even the extremists to climb.