Bank Robbing And Surfing

Keanu Reeves stars a top-of-his-class, rookie FBI agent that joins up with the LA branch to investigate bank robberies. A group of ‘ghost’ bank robbers, known as ghosts because they’re so quick and elusive, has hit various banks in the LA area for a total of twenty-seven times and the FBI are helpless to stop them. Reeves’ character, Johnny Utah, is teamed up with Gary Busey’s character, a veteran FBI officer who has become somewhat bored and indifferent about his job. Busey’s character has a theory on these ‘ghost’ robbers, better known as the Ex-Presidents as they wear rubber masks depicting former presidents. Busey thinks the robbers are surfers, and has some interesting evidence to support this claim. The problem is that his boss and colleagues think he’s a burned out fool, but Johnny Utah rekindles the fiery spirit of Busey and together they work to crack the case.

Utah goes undercover as a surfer, finding a girl along the way to teach him how to surf and who he eventually falls in love with. More intriguing though is Patrick Swayze’s character, Bhodi. Bhodi is a ‘searcher,’ as the lead female role, Tyler, explains. He is very spiritual, and the leader of a group of fellow young adrenaline junkies. His relaxed, but focused attitude intrigues Utah, who begins to put the entire mystery together. It’s hard not to say too much without introducing spoilers, but you can probably already figure out roughly what’s going on in this really original and entertaining movie.

Getting back to more general thoughts, there’s a lot to like about this movie. I really thought the story was very original and interesting, largely because of the characters. I mean, there have been plenty of undercover cop movies, but normally they’re grittier and more black and white than this film. In Point Break, there isn’t as clear of a line between good and bad until nearly the end, and even then, paths cross and characters change; the sum of all this is a very entertaining movie.

As Blu As the Ocean?

Point Break is an older film relatively speaking, and many of these suffer from decreased visual impact on Blu-ray. Point Break has its flaws, many of the dark scenes, like the campfire scenes for example, have some graininess around the darker edges, including on some of the faces. Most of the film takes place outdoors, on the beach, during the day, and it looks very good; it’s not outstanding, but that’s to be expected somewhat given the film’s age and the fact that the source may not be capable of producing more. As far as audio, the DTS-HD audio track was quite sufficient and enjoyable. The dialogue was fine and the effects and soundtrack were great.

Point Break on Blu-ray contains a few features, not much, but a few good ones that are worth a one-time view at least. The first feature I watched were the deleted scenes, these make up about ten minutes and are pretty uneventful; eight individual scenes with little to no purpose or in some cases, change, from the final cut are all that you get here. Furthermore, these scenes are in an unfinished SD state, although that isn’t too uncommon.

Next up I watched the four video featurettes. These were shot in 2006 from what I’ve discovered on the Internet, and are as follows: “It’s Make Or Break,” “Ride the Wave,” “Adrenaline Junkies,” and “On Location: Malibu.” The first feature is about twenty minutes long and feature cast and crew interviews, including Reeves, Swayze, the screenwriter, stunt doubles, and a few more, all basically patting each other on the back, but they do provide some neat insights to the film making process. One thing I learned that I thought was a neat point of trivia anyway was that Swayze did really jump out of the plane towards the end of the movie, it was not a stunt double. The other three features are seven to eight minutes long and aren’t too important; one features two cast members revisiting the beach where some of the film was shot, and for a few minutes you can listen to them talk about their experiences and memories. Another feature, “Ride the Wave,” is about surfing, and how it’s unlike anything any of us have ever done before, etc. Lastly, there is a very brief Stills Gallery that offers up some behind the scenes pictures, most of which you get to see during the “Make or Break” feature.