A group of egotistical environmentalists travels the world on a quest to... I don't know, become one with it or something? They travel by plane, helicopter, boat, truck, motorcycle, whatever they require in order to fulfill their self-fulfilling objectives, but also to return something to this world, like planting a tree. Much like many dumb action blockbusters are movies for stupid conservatives, Point Break is a movie for stupid liberals, which to me seems glaringly oxymoronic, though not nearly as much as traversing half the planet simply to honour and replenish it. But when your characters spout dialogue like they do in Point Break, you realise there'd be little point in alerting them to the error of their ways, cos would they even understand it? For the rest of us, this film is tricky enough to understand. The first hurdle is the challenge to care, when confronted with stock characters doing silly things. The second challenge is to keep caring, as those characters suddenly begin behaving in baffling ways that seem to betray their very nature, but also as you begin to realise that Point Break's supposed liberalism (one of the few things holding its head above the water at all) is only skin deep, and it's actually yet another sexist, racist piece of Hollywood-produced shit. Extraordinary feats are presented with ordinary bombast - stylistically, this mitigates their power, though Point Break is successful at least at presenting a catalogue of awe-inspiring, terrifying stunts. In this, it's a passable display of more-than-passable work, and the first movie in a long time to make me yell startled profanities at the screen, in public. Eschewing the homoeroticism of Kathryn Bigelow's original turns out to be counter-productive - it's just about the only element that could have rendered this film's story convincing, and anyway, it'd be a much better movie for it. The main thing it's missing? An extreme sports gay sex scene.
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