Point Break (2015)

Synopsis: Undercover FBI agent Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey) infiltrates a group of extreme athletes who are using their specialized skills to pull off a series of daring crimes.

The original Point Break, directed by Kathryn Bigelow in 1991, was a niftily offbeat crime thriller that over the years has apparently achieved quite a cult following.  Something which, you would think, would give pause to anyone intending to remake it.  Not so in the case of the oddly-named director and cinematographer of this film Ericson Core. If  remaking a much-loved original was his first failure of judgement the film itself is a record of the many that followed. His Point Blank ramps up the production values and action of the original by a factor of ten and reduces its appeal by an equivalent amount.  

It is little surprise that Core was the film's cinematographer as it is largely a series of visual set-pieces strung out along the line of a barely comprehensible narrative. This is, more or less, about a gang of extreme sports practitioners on a mission to carry out a series of eight ultimate challenges mapped out by a Japanese environmental activist who, legend has it, died  “in action”.  The goal is personal enlightenment although why this involves targeting Mammon in the form of US-connected multi-national mining companies is opaque to say the least. 

Still, intellectual satisfaction is not a criterion at play here. Rather the point seems to be that you should marvel as the awesome stunt work which involves surfing huge waves, snow-boarding down the side of precipitous mountains, climbing sheer cliff faces and so on.  Some of the stunts, when not clearly CGI-assisted, take place in spectacular locations but in themselves are not that spectacular, seeming assembled more in the editing suite than actually performed as such.  And everything else, which largely amounts to long-haired beared dudes glowering intently at each other while babes in bikinis party around them is pretty dire.

Luke Bracey who plays the Johnny Utah character looks disconcertingly like Heath Ledger (at least from some angles) or maybe Bon Jovi, I couldn’t be sure but that’s about the sum of his contribution to the film. Delroy Lindo and Ray Winstone who must have some big bills to pay also appear in stereotypical roles.  Bootylicious Australian actress Teresa Palmer provides some token heterosexual allure in film that otherwise is big on 'til-death-us-do-part male bonding and Edgar Ramirez (who plays the husband in the currently screening Joy) looks ruggedly handsome as he rumbles on with mystically portentous rhubarb about "following your line" (a theme taken up by the end credits).  

But really there's no reason to care who's in this film. Point Break 2015 is a dud.

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