![]() Putting two and two together and coming up with "Dude," Utah figures out that the perpetrators are fellow extreme athletes whose trail of crime parallels the infamous Ozaki Eight - a collection of eight extreme (needless to say, the word "extreme" is used a lot here) challenges spanning the globe devised by environmental activist Ozaki Ono to honor the beauty and power of Mother Nature while still looking like a refugee from an old Mountain Dew commercial. For his first case, he is assigned to investigate a pair of strange heists in Mumbai and Mexico in which massive American conglomerates are robbed by people whose heists are accompanied by wild stunts (such as motorcycling off of the upper floors of skyscrapers and parachuting to safety - don't ask about what happens to the bikes themselves) and who appear to distribute their ill-gotten gains to the poor. Once again, our hero is Johnny Utah ( Luke Bracey), an extreme sports enthusiast who suffered a great tragedy - one that plays more like a spoof of the opening of " Cliffhanger" than anything else - that inspires him to quit the sport and become an F.B.I. 25 years later, we have now been blessed with a "Point Break" remake that is completely lacking in any of the visceral thrills or apparent charisma of the original and which could not be duller if it tried. To be fair, it was dumb but it certainly wasn't boring and director Kathryn Bigelow (who would go on to make such great films as " Strange Days" and " The Hurt Locker") handled the action sequences in such a visually arresting manner (especially in an extraordinary mid-film chase scene through a residential neighborhood that is still stunning to watch) that there were times when you could almost convince yourself to forget that the rest of the film was a preposterous mess. After all, the film in which callow FBI agent Johnny Utah ( Keanu Reeves) infiltrated a group of bank-robbing surfers led by the enigmatic and Zen-spouting Bodhi ( Patrick Swayze) in order to bring them down-was an aggressively stupid film back then and time has not exactly done it any favors. Or, as Bodhi puts it: “We’re all gonna die.Since making its debut in the summer of 1991, the action film "Point Break" has developed a cult following that I continue to be at a loss at fully explaining. Whether you memorized the first “Point Break” or are completely new to these movies, it’s no mystery from early-on that things cannot end well for “The Bodhisattva.”īut like its predecessor, the 2015 film is more about the morally complex and adrenaline-saturated journey than the final resting place. “I can’t tell you why any one person does it, but for me, I want to evolve as a human being, see how far I can go,” Corliss said.īodhi takes that ethos and pushes it to the brink - and beyond. “Point Break” deals with some similar issues differently: Both the movie’s characters and the extreme athletes who perform their stunts are more than willing to risk their lives for a cause. Well, the tree called “Point Break” is dropping on Christmas - same as the NFL-medical-detective film “Concussion.” That movie portrays a league that, for decades, put lives on the line for the sake of entertainment while teetering between denial and reluctant acceptance of football’s life-altering consequences. It brings special meaning to a question Bodhi poses midway through the movie: “If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody is there to YouTube it, did it really happen?” But more often, their travails are performed among themselves or, at best, made into movies and videos that bypass Hollywood and are distributed straight to the niche audiences that care the most about this stuff. These extreme stars are no strangers to this kind of danger. We pushed the limits as far as we possibly could.” “But honestly, that wouldn’t respect those sports at all. ![]() “Sure, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to shoot these scenes on a green-screen stage in Atlanta,” director Ericson Core said. One portion of the filming triggered a Class 4 Avalanche. Corliss called it the most dangerous stunt that’s ever been filmed for a movie.īig mountain snowboarders Ralph Backstrom and Mike Basich joined De Le Rue in playing Bodhi, Johnny and the rest for their near-vertical trip down the Aiguille de la Grande in France. It took around 60 takes to produce a heart-pounding, five-minute scene of the movie’s philosophical antihero, Bodhi, and his wingsuit-wearing posse jumping off the Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps, dodging mountains and skimming just above valley floors on the way to a safe landing. The filmmakers traveled to four continents and spared no expense to shoot the action. ![]() “It made you think that maybe you can earn a living doing something you love.” “For Generation Xers, that movie was an inspiration for us,” said wingsuit pilot Jeb Corliss, who helped with the remake.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |