So. It’s finally here. The trailer for whatever you’d like to call this new version of Point Break. A reimagining? A homage? A bastard child? Who knows.
The original, in surfing circles at least, is a cult classic. Not so much for it’s surfing but more for just being a mainstream Hollywood film with surfing in it that wasn’t a total cringe fest. Hell it had cameos from Matt Archbold and Dino Andino, not to mention Mr Chili Pepper as a classic, surf-Nazi, grumpy local.
Admittedly the reason the original flew, apart from the sure handed direction of Kathryn Bigelow (who went on to make The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty), was the cast. Patrick Swayze was a deadset screen icon already. Gary Busey a firm favourite in surfing circles thanks to his barnstorming showing as Leroy the Masochist in Big Wednesday and Keanu Reeves dropped the, admittedly very funny, dopey Bill and Ted schtick to man up in his first grown up role.
It was a simple story of bank robbing, adrenalin junky, surfers up against the Feds. Outside of surfing circles it’s become one of the nineties action cop classics as immortalised in Hot Fuzz:
Danny: Have you ever fired your gun up in the air and gone ‘Arrrrrghhhh!!!’
Nicholas: No.
Now the new version. We know they filmed some surfing sequences at big Teahupoo. Apart from that it seems to be an energy drink advertising campaign gone mad. No longer are the protagonists surfers with a penchant for skydiving. They are ‘extreme athletes’. So they’re snowboarding, motor-crossing, base-jumping, skydiving, surfing, climbing, multi-discipline specialists. Impressive in its self that anyone has the time to be proficient at all the above.
If nothing else it looks impressive. The stars don’t have the pull of the original cast but that’s not always a bad thing. Who’d heard of anyone in Star Wars before that blew the doors off of cinema history? The suspension of disbelief is sometimes a good thing. They’ve also borrowed the sound effects CD from the Transformers franchise which is no bad thing.
It’s not in cinemas until December so we will gladly sit through it then, unless it opens on the same night as the new Star Wars in which case, err, no.
Edit: The people have spoken … the consensus on a fired up Carve FB is a big fat glass of ‘nope!’
Below is some free surfing from the filming session at Teahupoo.
