Ericson Core’s Point Break is the latest in a long line of pointless remakes trying to cash in on the name recognition of a film that people like.

I personally have no massive attachment to the original Point Break. I like it but I don’t number it among the great untouchable films so the fact that it was being remade didn’t necessarily bother me. Readers of this site will be surprised by that as I often do get annoyed by this retreading of things that I liked and I am usually the first to complain when someone takes a property and trots out a soulless cash grab. Robocop I’m looking at you! All I’m really saying is that I wasn’t bothered by the existence of this film one way or another and was fairly willing to give it a shot but I regret my decision and should have known better.

There is almost nothing redeemable about this film whatsoever. I can compliment the stunt work that managed to be fast paced, exciting and excellent but that’s about it. I would almost be willing to bet money that the set pieces were decided in advance and the script was written around those as it’s the only way it makes sense for the characters to move from place to place to make these happen.

To call the story weak would be an understatement. The characters are flat and wooden, none of the dialogue is at all believable and the overall experience is so painfully boring that when the set pieces come around I had completely lost all interest.

Luke Bracey as Johnny Utah has to be one of the least charismatic leading man I’ve seen in a while. This guy is Jai Courtney bad but I don’t want to completely rule him out as an actor because he has absolutely nothing to work with here. It was completely unbelievable that he would be intelligent enough to work his way into the FBI in such a short time and doubly unbelievable that anyone would take him seriously when he does.

Edgar Ramirez is similarly terrible as the villain Bodhi but since I’ve seen him be capable in other things I feel confident in attributing that to the script. The sense of camaraderie that is supposed to exist between him and Utah simply isn’t there despite the fact that the film tells us that Bodhi trusts him. His motivation and rationale for doing what he does is laughably thin as well.

Teresa Palmer plays Samsara but she might as well be called “Generic Love Interest”. She’s in exactly 4 scenes and only has a handful of lines so she can’t even be called a character. There is absolutely nothing to her that the film tells us other than being attracted to Utah which definitely doesn’t come across as Palmer and Bracey have absolutely no chemistry with one another.

The strangest thing about this is that it didn’t have to be called Point Break. There were enough differences between this and the original to get away with calling it something else. It would still be terrible and be compared to Point Break but wouldn’t fall into the “Why would they remake…?” category. Having said that, if it weren’t for the name recognition then this would probably have been straight to DVD and would have been better for it. It would be better if it hadn’t been made at all but having it removed from wider consumption would have been an acceptable compromise. As an alternative tile, might I suggest Pointless Remake?

Verdict

A soulless cash in attempt that does nothing to redeem the idea of remaking classic films. A terrible script, wooden characters and terrible acting aren’t at all redeemed by some impressive set pieces. This shouldn’t have been made and should be skipped.