Point Break (2015) is not a movie, it’s an ode to extreme sports with a plot carelessly grafted on. That being said, parts of it were utterly beautiful. Specifically, the mountainy parts. Perhaps it’s a pity that I didn’t watch it in 3D!
More about this mess of a movie below, with “SPOILERS”, not that there’s really a plot.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/point-break-2015/id1062487135
What I liked about Point Break (2015)
The stunts. The motocross, rock climbing, surfing, skydiving, snowboarding, and wingsuit-flying were done by experts and filmed as outdoor practical stunts, not in studios with greenscreens.
The best part was the wingsuit sequence, because who doesn’t love flying, even if you look like an idiotic flying squirrel while doing it?
What I did not like about Point Break (2015)
Neither helping the downtrodden nor saving Mother Earth was the primary theme of the movie. Neither was living off the grid. Neither was conquering fear or recovering from guilt or mourning a death. Neither was valuing law and order. Neither was following your own path. You could say these were all themes, but I would say the movie was so incoherent that there was no theme at all.
It was a stretch to believe the protagonist was ever an FBI agent for any part of the movie, undercover or not. When he tried to stop the explosion at the mine, he totally failed, and it didn’t seem to matter much when he got the badge for real. His supervisors seemed to belong to a different movie entirely.
The protagonist’s love interest figured in a surprise plot twist, but the drama was lacking. Her backstory was that she was an orphan who was adopted by a Japanese daredevil mystic who was killed by whalers. Right. Sure. Fine. Whatever. I don’t understand why she was involved with the bank robbery, since she seemed to disapprove of violent methods.
How does anyone tell the daredevils apart, or keep track of how many there are, or care about any of them? When one died snowboarding it was no big deal. I couldn’t understand some of their dialog. I didn’t know how the rich guy really fit in, since clearly the daredevils were willing and able to steal money and thus didn’t really need the rich guy’s money.
How did that fistfight scene fit in with the big eight impossible goals? And what was the deal with the goals, anyway? There was so little said about them that I found it implausible that anyone could guess when or where any of them would be or what form they would take.
Upshot: the movie had poor plotting and poor characterization throughout.
What about the other Point Break?
Since Point Break (2015) was based on Point Break (1991), now I’m curious what the older one is like. Wikipedia says it’s about FBI agent Keanu Reeves investigating Patrick Swayze’s gang of criminal surfers. That sounds way different. The plot summary has several points of similarity, but I’d say these are two totally different movies, and probably (except from the standpoint of mountain scenery) the older one is better.
