The Legacy of “Point Break”

When Point Break was released 25 years ago, I’m not sure anyone realized what a long shadow the film would cast. The film made its budget back, but it was far from a box-office behemoth. The reviews were mixed, many of them highlighting Kathryn Bigelow’s astounding direction while  deriding the storytelling as a hollow excuse to ogle attractive men. But relegating the film to merely a guilty pleasure does it a disservice.

Point Break is the platonic ideal of what an action movie can be. It redefined what the genre could do by privileging joy over grit, earnestness over irony, and the physicality of its stars over bloody violence. It radically altered what we’ve come to expect of heroes by trading vengeful machismo for vulnerability. In the process, it also cemented Keanu Reeves as an action star whose specific skills in the genre have yet to be seen elsewhere. Looking across the pop-culture landscape, you can find the film’s influence in everything from the ongoing Fast and Furious franchise to the brotherly love that sets off the chain of events in Captain America: Civil War.

What makes this success even more is astounding is that on the page, it shouldn’t work. Point Break follows Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), a former quarterback-turned-FBI rookie with a bum knee. He’s tasked with going undercover to find a group of bank-robber surfers dubbed “The Ex-Presidents” for the rubber face masks of U.S. Presidents they don during their heists. They’re led by Bodhi (Patrick Swayze), a charismatic borderline cult leader who extolls rebelling against the system “that kills the human spirit.” The premise sounds uniquely ridiculous, but Bigelow’s direction and the chemistry between the leads makes it work magnificently.

One of the more interesting things about Point Break is how Bigelow brings to the surface the philosophical motivations for the actions these men take. Bigelow’s interest in turning genres inside out exists in tandem with her exploration of the philosophical and moral underpinnings of the violence men do, whether in the Western-tinged horror Near Dark (1987) or the war drama The Hurt Locker (2008). In his review of Point Break, Roger Ebert writes, “They aren’t men of action, but men of thought who choose action as a way of expressing their beliefs.” Action movies often ask us to buy into the blood-soaked fantasies of powerful men hinging usually on revenge, control, or tenuous ideas of justice. Think of the far more brutal films from the 1980s and early ’90s preceding Point Break: Escape from New York, the Rambo films, Die Hard, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. For the men of Point Break, the fantasy is all about transcendence, which makes even the most harrowing moments in the film have an unexpected grace.

Before Bigelow came on board, Point Break was slated to be directed by Ridley Scott with Matthew Broderick as Johnny Utah and Charlie Sheen as Bodhi (although several other stars were considered). But the sexual magnetism Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves bring to their characters is so overpowering that it’s difficult to imagine anyone else inhabiting them—certainly not Sheen, with his penchant for smarminess that’s utterly foreign to Swayze. Bigelow adds to their allure by framing them not as stereotypical male-power fantasies, but by more radically making them objects of lust and admiration. They’re vulnerable not only in the narrative but in how they’re framed by the camera. At times, Point Break comes across as a love story between two men on opposite sides of the law. In her own way, Bigelow is a pioneer for centering male beauty, and the audience’s desire for it, in an action film in ways that have become commonplace in the modern era. Just look at how the camera gazes at the often-shirtless leads in films like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the Captain America films, Thor, and Jurassic World, with the males given the sort of beauty shots you’d expect of actresses. More than anything, the enduring legacy of this film is how it upends our expectations of masculinity within the genre.

If every generation gets the action film it deserves, the same can be said about its stars. Whether the debonair, light-on-his-feet Errol Flynn in the 1930s, the coolness of Steve McQueen in the 1960s, or the taciturn Clint Eastwood in the 1970s, you can easily draw a parallel between action stars and the shifting expectations of what it means to be a man in America.

Swayze’s star image at the time Point Break came out was linked to his skills as a romantic lead in films like Ghost (1990) and Dirty Dancing (1987). He’s charming and effervescent, with the sort of charisma that can easily draw you in no matter what story he’s telling—which makes him a natural fit for Bodhi, who is a cult leader in everything but name. With his striking long blonde hair, easygoing smile, and the confident swagger in how he moves his body no matter the setting, it’s understandable why everyone around him falls under his spell.

But Bigelow’s most impressive move was casting then-26-year-old Keanu Reeves as Johnny Utah. At that time, the kind of star Reeves would be wasn’t actually clear. His profile was associated primarily with his goofy, good-natured turn in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989). Bigelow reportedly championed Reeves in the role, seeing in him the action-star potential that would be fulfilled as the 1990s continued. As Utah, Reeves is, on the surface, a bit foolish and ambling with that tell-tale blankness that people confuse with an inability to inhabit characters. But if you look closely, Reeves gives Utah touches of loneliness and yearning that go a long way to explain why he wouldn’t pull the trigger on Bodhi when given the chance at a crucial moment in the film. As an action star, some of Reeves’ best moments are marked by a surprising silence, as when he’s laying down next to love interest Tyler (Lori Petty) nearly staring directly into the camera; or when, while skydiving, he joyfully links hands with the same men he’s trying to take down.

There are many entrancing moments between the two leads, like that skydiving scene, which is like an ecstatic mid-air ballet with Bodhi twisting and flipping miles above the California skyline. But the best action in the film occurs about an hour into the story. Utah and his exasperated partner FBI Agent Angelo Pappas (Gary Busey) are staking out a bank they correctly suspect the Ex-Presidents will hit up. This results in one of the most sprawling, suspenseful chase scenes in modern filmmaking. Though seeing the cars frantically weave through Los Angeles streets and parking garages is enjoyable enough, the sequence doesn’t truly become mesmerizing until Utah is forced to chase the Reagan-masked Bodhi on foot. The camera twists, dips, and turns, staying on their heels as they traverse through claustrophobic alleyways, backyards strewn with garish toys, into the homes of unsuspecting citizens. All of this goes on for six minutes. Only when Utah falls on his bum knee does it finally end—and even though he has a clear shot, he, out of frustration and misguided loyalty, can’t pull the trigger on Bodhi. It isn’t just Bigelow’s direction that makes this chase memorable but how it represents an important turning point for the leads. What drives the tension is our investment in the friendship between Bodhi and Utah.

While modern action heroes are given a more fleshed-out emotional arc than their forefathers, this often comes at the expense of the female characters. Scarlett Johansson has appeared in five Marvel films as Black Widow and still has yet to have anything close to cohesive characterization. Emily Blunt may be a badass in Edge of Tomorrow, but Tom Cruise remains the true hero. Perhaps most egregious of all is Franka Potente’s death in the opening moments of The Bourne Supremacy, an all-too-common example of the tendency of these kinds of films to kill off female characters just to motivate the brooding male leads. Few recent action films draw from Point Break’s example of making its female lead—Lori Petty’s tomboy Tyler—a fascinating creation all her own. Tyler operates as Utah’s entrance into the world he’s seeking to ingratiate himself within while undercover, teaching him, among other things, how to surf. Spunky, quick-witted, and herself a bit wounded, she is as far as possible from mere eye candy; if anything, with her casual styling and extremely short hair, she feels downright unconventional as a female lead for this genre. Even when she’s held hostage toward the end of the film, she doesn’t feel like an empty pawn since we’ve become invested in her story almost as much as in Utah’s.

Perhaps the biggest reason that Point Break works as well as it does is that everyone treats the story with full seriousness, refusing to condescend to it. This is the kind of film where John C. McGinley tells Keanu Reeves early on that he is “young, dumb, and full of come” at an FBI office with a perfectly straight face. But by leaning full tilt into the visceral pleasures of the narrative, Bigelow & co. find a sense of wonder that remains rare in the genre, even among the films it influenced. We can find an echo of the dedicated, attractive men of Point Break in the construction of many modern action heroes in films like the original Bourne trilogy, Guardians of the Galaxy, the multi-ethnic cast of the Fast and Furious films, nearly every action character Keanu Reeves has played since, and even the sensitive albeit reserved lead of Mad Max: Fury Road. The modern action hero can be many things: cocky, brash, an expert in his field, or a novice thrust into a tough situation. But they’re all linked by something Bigelow championed not just in Point Break, but throughout her oeuvre: unexpected vulnerability.

Modern films still have a lot to learn from Point Break, whether it’s Bigelow’s nearly unmatched understanding of creating comprehensible action, or the irony-free charm the leads bring to the roles. An action film doesn’t need darkness to be cool (I’m looking at you, Batman v Superman and pretty much all the films that name-check The Dark Knight as an influence) or have to wear its intelligence on its sleeve in order to have a lasting impact. The legacy of Point Break ultimately rests on how it dismantles the crude, vengeful masculinity of 1980s action stars in order to create something far more subversive: beautiful men framed as such in search of a way to transcend the shackles of their current predicament through simple joy.