“An orgy of physical bravado”: Point Break reviewed in 1991

Brought to Kathryn Bigelow as a ready-made project, the unhelpfully retitled Point Break (it was originally scripted, with aptly grandiloquent resonance, as Riders on the Storm) converts Bigelow’s own previous night creatures into joyous elementals, unleashed at every sunrise for a renewed orgy of physical bravado. The film is constructed from a series of increasingly outrageous tests to which the director herself has responded with an unflagging zeal, in celebration not only of the spectacular pleasures of surfing and skydiving and chasing bank robbers, but also of the remarkably visceral extremes that violence itself can achieve when orchestrated for the cinema.

Recalling Bigelow’s bikers and vampires, it’s no surprise that her interest in the beach community of Point Break is as a “really bizarre culture that somehow exists simultaneously in the world as we know it”, nor that this same sense of self-contained eccentricity extends to cop partnerships, bank employees, and the offices of the FBI. What is a surprise about Point Break is that, on the positive side, Bigelow in broad daylight has unfurled a powerfully epic canvas far transcending the timid rustic glimpses of The Loveless, and that, more negatively, she has stepped aside from the fascinatingly ambiguous feminism of Blue Steel to deliver a dose of macho claptrap such as to leave John Milius and Walter Hill pale with envy.

Breathlessly hurling us, after its initial fusillade under the opening credits, into the heart of FBI headquarters with a single labyrinthine shot that threads through doors, desks, people and a monologue of disdain to leave the imperturbable Johnny Utah with a muttered punchline, Point Break sets an awesome pace from the start. The painterly Bigelow, whose contemplative lacunae for The Loveless evoked critical references to Edward Hopper, now seems fully wedded to the urgent hustle of her executive producer, James Cameron. One gasps one’s way through Point Break, partly in admiration, partly in shock, often because time to breathe appears limited. The ninety-second bank robbery, for example, which dumps us on the floor along with the bank’s bewildered customers, is an enthralling blitz of genre expletives, with bizarre echoes of presidential calumny evoked by the sight of Nixon (whose clones performed a comparable feat in John Flynn’s Best Seller), Reagan, Carter and LBJ on a mission of cheerful pillage.

A similar discouragement to rational response comes with the raid on the Razorhead house, a close-quarters fusillade of vicious confusion culminating in a struggle over the spinning blades of a lawnmower. Like the attenuated chase scene that later races through streets, houses, and assorted glass and canine obstacles, this is heatedly exploitative film-making, urged on by percussive bursts of sound. The chase, while unlikely as a sample of stamina, at least leaves our hero impotently on his back, emptying his gun into the air in recognition that the escaping target is one aspect of himself.

Oddly lightweight in cast, as though the theme (which, taking our hint from Near Dark, might be termed that of persistent immortality) belonged to some departed race of Hollywood giants, Point Break usefully resists the temptation to act as a vehicle for Patrick Swayze, who plays king beach rat with commendable reticence and not so much a swagger as a quickstep prance. Instead, limelight, laugh lines and love interest are devoted to Keanu Reeves who, understandably perplexed by the strange humours of his opening scenes, and outfaced by the intensity of Lori Petty’s skill as his partner, settles for an oafish stare in which the joy of a burgeoning mysticism seems sadly missing.

Greater miscalculation turns the characters of Angelo (Gary Busey) and his FBI boss (John McGinley) into authoritarian parodies, determined to extract a comical rivalry from their scenes together, but as a result invalidating the film’s legitimately serious quest. If there is some vestige of apotheosis remaining – apart, perhaps, from the astonishing sight of Johnny Utah diving out of the sky with nothing but a gun – it is the confirmation that Kathryn Bigelow, aside from her other qualities, is now one of the finest action directors in the business.