However, way back in the late ‘80s, Reeves was already impressing in dramas like River’s Edge and Permanent Record before his breakout role in the anarchic comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. While The Matrix movies are among his most famous blockbusters, alongside 1994’s action classic Speed, Reeves also starred in another underrated masterpiece of the genre years before any of those movies graced the theater screen.
Directed by Zero Dark Thirty’s Kathryn Bigelow, 1991’s Point Break is one of the best action thrillers ever made. The movie sees Reeves’s FBI rookie Johnny Utah assigned to infiltrate the “Ex-Presidents,” a gang of hippie bank robbers who earn their moniker by wearing masks of former US presidents during their heists. The group use the funds they rob to fund a life of extreme sports like big wave surfing and skydiving, and Utah soon finds himself strangely enthralled by their charismatic leader, Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi.
AMC's Point Break TV Series Can Redeem The Awful Movie Remake
For a staggering 122 minutes, Bigelow’s best movie bounces between the natural charming rapport of Utah and Bodhi, the almost unbearable tension of Reeves’ cop potentially being exposed, and fast-paced chases and brutal fist and gunfights that feel viscerally impactful. Where goofier action movies like Guns Akimbo may be faster paced and feature more bloodshed, few entries into the genre succeed on quite as many levels as Point Break.
The quiet, character-driven scenes between Reeves and Swayze are superb, as viewers are torn between wanting Bodhi to escape and Utah to succeed in his mission. The movie’s iconic chase sequences, including a bruising foot chase after a DEA drug raid, are pure slick, pulse-pounding action cinema, and the skydiving sequences manage the rare feat of making extreme sports feel as exciting as they are in reality. All of which makes 2015’s remake all the more embarrassingly misguided.
With a script from Children of the Corn reboot director Kurt Wimmer, 2015’s Point Break was a flop from start to finish. Full of visually stunning location work, the remake suffered from a profound lack of humor and charm, feeling leaden and po-faced throughout. Fortunately, the upcoming AMC series based on Point Break can redeem this misfire and prove that the franchise has potential outside the original movie.
Point Break's Sequel Can't Rely On Nostalgia Alone
As recently reported in Variety, AMC is set to reboot Point Break as an eight-episode streaming series with production beginning in 2027. The show will center on a “mysterious ex-pro surfer” who is sent by the FBI to infiltrate a new crew inspired by the original movie’s Ex-Presidents.
In an era when shows like the Yellowstone spinoff Marshals are expanding what police procedurals can look like, this streaming spinoff has the potential to be a modern classic. By actively engaging with the story of its predecessor, Point Break’s AMC show can be more than a nostalgic retread of the original movie.
The series could complicate the original movie’s story by depicting the new heist gang as a more volatile and less easygoing set of criminals than the original movie’s Ex-Presidents, or take the opposite approach by making the show’s antihero more corrupt and cynical and the bank robbers even more likable. There is no shortage of ways for Point Break’s show to reinvent the action franchise, provided the show doesn’t repeat the mistakes of 2015’s remake.
Release Date
July 12, 1991
Runtime
122 minutes
Director
Kathryn Bigelow
Writers
W. Peter Iliff, Rick King
English (US) ·