Whenever someone mentions "women directors", first association among more experienced filmgoer is some low-budget family drama or ambitious project burdened with feminist issues. Kathryn Bigelow is one of women directors best known for avoiding such stereotypes. Her opus is almost exclusively in the domain usually associated with her male colleagues, including her former husband James Cameron - action films. Actually, *Point Break*, her 1991 film, is more testosterone-filled than you could have expected from most film makers with macho reputations.
Plot is set in Los Angeles where Johnny Utah (played by Keanu Reeves), former star of college football, comes in order to take position of rookie agent within FBI field office. He is assigned as partner to old and more experienced agent Angelo Pappas (played by Gary Busey), man psychologically exhausted with the case he couldn't have solved for the past three years. In that time couple of dozen banks in Los Angeles were hit by "Ex Presidents", very efficient gang of robbers who wear masks of former US presidents. The few clues lead Pappas to believe that the robbers could be surfers, so he decides to put Utah into surfers' circles as an undercover agent. The entrance to this arcane world is former surfer's girlfriend Tyler (played by Lori Petty) who would teach young FBI agent all the skills necessary for excel in that sport. When Utah comes to the beach he start seeing surfing not as a sport, but as a way of life, especially after meeting group of surfers led by Bodhi (played by Patrick Swayze). Two men soon become good friends and Utah becomes part of the group. In the meantime, the robberies continue while Johnny is almost completely oblivious to the clues that his new friends could have been the perpetrators.
*Point Break* is beautiful film to watch. Donald Peterman's cinematography all the visual splendour - pretty beaches, magnificent waves, gorgeous women - that we usually tend to associate with surfer lifestyle. Kathryn Bigelow, for her part, invests almost religious passion in directing action scenes, whether the action involves surfing, skydiving or the standard action ingredients like brawls, shootouts or chases. Those scenes are quite impressive and it shouldn't surprise anyone that this film might be appealing to many viewers who like this kind of thing. At times, those scenes seem to have even some higher purpose, being illustration of thrill-seeking philosophy preached by one of the characters.
Unfortunately, Bigelow forgot the most important ingredients for the successful action film - plot and characters. Without those two, the film is less a work of art and more technical display of visual skills. W. Peter Iliff's and Rick King's script for *Point Break* use all of their creativity for the premise, while the plot and characters are nothing more than the series of cliches – rookie cop, old mentor, boss who doesn't understand them, protagonist's girlfriend whose sole purpose is to be threatened by villains etc. All this could have been forgivable with good casting, but Bigelow wasn't particularly lucky with the choice of Keanu Reeves for the role of rookie FBI agent. At times Reeves can make good roles, but here his lack of acting ability is quite visible in the presence of much better actors. Reeves' performance can't be anything but wooden compared with manic display of Gary Busey or minimalist but powerful skills of Swayze. Another problem for the film is total lack of chemistry between Reeves and Petty who are supposed to be couple in this film.
In the end, Bigelow is so in love with her action scenes, that she puts them in the film at the expense of characterisation, common sense and even the film's pace. In the last parts of the film the characters start acting irrationally only in order to provide few extra action scenes. Because of them the film is at least 30 minutes longer than it should have been. The worst disappointment comes at the end, with the highly implausible and un-cathartic finale. Yet, despite those flaws and sad realisation that it could have been much better, *Point Break* is film that could be quite entertating at times. For those who like surfing and understand philosophy behind such lifestyle this film could be something more. Unfortunately, those people are going to be minority.
RATING: 4/10 (++)
*(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on November 26th 2002)*
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Critic: AA