Movie Reviews From the Past

3/16/06

You know how sometimes you catch yourself watching a really shitty movie, and beyond all reason you keep watching it all the way to the bitter end even though there's a red liquid coming from your ears and you can smell baking ozone? My roommate Aaron and I find ourselves in this situation more often than should be accounted for by chance. I still have sweaty night terrors from viewing Over the Top; a steaming pile of an arm wrestling movie "starring" Sylvester Stallone. The other night we found ourselves actually watching the celluloid equivalent of scooping your brain out with a rusty spoon. I speak, of course, of Point Break.

In the vein of testosterone-laden, overtly homoerotic movies, Point Break delivers like gangbusters, with raw, oily man-tension between Keanu "Whoa" Reeves and Patrick "Roadhouse" Swayze.

Overall the plot is patently ridiculous. If you've never seen it let me save you some heartache: Keanu is an FBI agent who couldn't find his ass with a flashlight and Sherpa guide, going after a blond, crimp-haired Swayze who is the leader of a gang of bank-robbing surfers. Bank robbing surfers. It's the amphetamine-induced fever dream of a madman with visions of kittens juggling knives in his head.

The dialogue is so patently ridiculous that you expect at any moment to see one of the actors to crack open a Mountain Dew and pour it over their face while shouting, "Extreme!" But as I sat there wondering why one of Swayze's surfer crew had a Robin Hood beard, feeling my brain try to squeeze down my throat in an attempt to save itself, I realized that this movie, despite its savage failings, is actually revolutionary in many important and stupid ways.

Most buddy-cop movies apply the time-honored tradition of pairing a loose-cannon with a by-the-book straight-arrow and we all watch the hilarity. They annoy the shit out of each other, but both are always great cops. Point Break shatters that mold by taking the bold step of just cramming two openly psychotic, ineffectual agents who are lucky not to be meter maids together and watching the ensuing car wreck. Keanu is partnered with the always funny (in a terrifying sort of way) Gary Busy. How these two ever made it through the first week at Quantico is a mystery to me. Seriously, they make Dudley Do-Right look like Elliot friggin' Ness. The only way they accidentally get any police work done at all is by falling ass-backwards into it then fucking it up beyond all repair.

First, we're treated to Keanu and Gary's bungling brand of ineptitude when they set up a narco bust on a house containing several armed-to-the-teeth drug dealers, one of which amps-up the gargantuan acting skill already assembled in this movie by being Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. What does our dynamic duo bring with them to this highly dangerous bust? A crack SWAT team with riot gear, shotguns and body armor? Not for our heroes! No, they feel it's much more appropriate to take this prey down with the two of them clad in Hawaiian shirts, sporting tiny handguns with the awesome backup of two comparably armed, bottom-barrel FBI grunts, who look like the guy in the red shirt that always got killed when Kirk and Spock beamed down to a planet. It does not go well.

Sadly, our two stars survived.

Moving right along to their next cluster-fuck, we find Keanu and Gary staking out a bank, confident the ex-president mask-wearing surf robbers will be hitting it that very afternoon. (Spoiler--Swayze's the one wearing Ronald Reagan.) The success of being proved correct is completely overshadowed by the fact that while the bank is being robbed, Keanu and Gary remain blissfully unaware of it because they're getting meatball subs from the local stand. Finally coming out of their beef and sauce-induced stupor whenever the robbers burst from the bank and make their getaway, Keanu and Gary undertake the most convoluted, Rube Goldburg-ian of chases (this time sans backup!) in which at any moment you expect the movie to just implode upon itself because the universe can only put up with so much ridiculousness before it just throws up its hands and rips a hole in space/time.

This eventually degenerates into an unapologetically retarded foot chase between Keanu and Swayze where at one point--I'm not kidding--Patrick throws a fucking dog at him. I'm genuinely surprised there wasn't a banana peel gag. Of course Swayze gets away because Keanu can't shoot him (they're buds!) and you're left with the taste of rising bile in your mouth, wistfully pining for the competent police work of the Keystone Cops.

Finally we get to the last showdown which takes place at an airport; Keanu and Gary presumably being chauffeured there in an FBI short bus. What have our heroes learned from constantly underestimating the bad guys and perpetually getting caught with their pants around their ankles? Nothing, apparently, as Gary gets shot in the back and Keanu is blackmailed into aiding Swayze with his escape. It was about this point in the film that I just wanted to reach through the TV and dump Keanu's books for being such a tiresome, pathetic, "special" agent. You sort of want him to be attacked by killer bees.

The last scene of the movie is the best...or worst, depending on your tolerance for awful hilarity. Skip ahead a year or so and we have Keanu running into Swayze down on a beach in Australia where Swayze is planning to "catch the ultimate ride" he's been talking about the whole goddamn movie, on waves large enough to capsize Noah's Ark. It's revealed that Keanu has been tracking Swayze this whole time, just missing him in every city (shocker there.) Since the dolt knew Swayze would be at that beach at that this time of year did he have to go all "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" on his ass, I dunno. And then, when Swayze asks:

"Still surfing?"

Keanu answers, "Everyday."

WHAT?! Well maybe if you weren't fucking surfing every damn day you could have saved a lot of trouble and caught him months ago, you inbred piece of Jell-O headed shit!

So far, Swayze has metaphorically bitch-slapped Keanu every step of the way. To be fair, this is not a monumental task; a dim-witted woodchuck could pull one over on this guy. It's less Sherlock vs. Moriarty and more Mr. Magoo vs. a small piece of lint. I won't go into the asinine ending of this sweltering mass of action-genre vomit, but rest assured Keanu lives up to his role as a spinelessly-indecisive, quivering mound of something a whale barfed up.

Goddamn I hate that movie.