I love Kathryn Bigelow and have probably seen all her movie, including Point Break, starring Keanu Reeves and the dearly departed Patrick Swayze. I have a rule: only make remakes of bad movies, which Point Break was not. It has been decades since I saw the original, but I remember that it worked. The original Point Break had an unconventional, extended foot chase scene and a bromance before the word was invented with a poetic ending.
Point Break (2015) thought that audiences needed multiple tragic backstories to explain the motivations of the protagonist and antagonist, which we didn’t. Point Break (2015) also thought that we needed more exotic locations and more extreme exploits than the original, which we didn’t. Point Break (2015) also increases the spiritual mumbo jumbo in order to help the main character, the undercover FBI agent, move on from his feelings of guilt. Unlike the original, Point Break (2015) loses its sense of pure joy in what the human body can accomplish in exchange for abandoning any charisma the actors may possess for empty platitudes and cardboard cutout emotions.
If Point Break (2015) thought that I would be interested in the pathos of a YouTube star or thought it could elevate the storyline by making the antagonist into an ecoterrorist, it was severely mistaken. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Point Break (2015) failed to establish a mutual attraction between the antagonist and protagonist and the attraction of the audience to both, which was the foundation of the original. Skip Point Break (2015) and watch Planet Earth if you want to see spectacular international locations in high definition.