1296. Point Break (1991)

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, Gary Busey

Director: Kathryn Bigelow

Running Time: 122 mins

Point Break is an American film about an ex-football player turned FBI agent who must infiltrate a gang of surfers that have been serially committing bank robberies across the country.

This is one of the 90s action movies that has aged well over the last two decades, and retains a strong following amongst viewers nowadays. Whilst I did enjoy Point Break, I still don’t really get why this is lauded as one of the best 90s action movies of all. There is without doubt some brilliant action, and an interesting relationship between two lead characters, but there’s nothing hugely exciting or unpredictable about Point Break that makes me see this as a legendary action movie.

However, let’s start on the positive side. The best thing about Point Break, by a long way, is Kathryn Bigelow’s directing. There are at least four brilliant action sequences in this movie that are a huge amount of fun to watch, and by far the most enthralling parts of the movie. Bigelow helms the action scenes brilliantly, and adds a real intensity to them that the film’s story generally lacks, which was great to see.

Also, despite my issues with the story, I was interested in the relationship between Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze’s characters. Reeves plays the FBI agent infiltrating the surfer gang led by Patrick Swayze, because it did provide a degree of unpredictability that helped to make the final action sequences a lot more entertaining.

In terms of the performances, they’re fine. The characters aren’t particularly interesting or well-developed, so there’s not too much for the actors to offer, but they do help to make a lot of the film as cool as it needs to be to be a fun watch (maybe that’s why everyone seems to love Point Break so much).

So, why wasn’t I so impressed by Point Break? Well, I wasn’t unimpressed, but I couldn’t see past this being a simple, fun action movie. Firstly, the plot took a little too long to get going, but also, some of the conclusions that the film comes to in the final act felt a little unsatisfying.

Overall, Point Break is a decent action film. It was a fun watch, and I really enjoyed Kathryn Bigelow’s excellently-directed action sequences, as well as the central character relationship, but the story just wasn’t exciting, unpredictable or interesting enough to make this any more than a run-of-the-mill action movie, and that’s why it gets a 7.4 from me.