For 25 years, I received texts from my best friend, Gary, that consisted of no intro, no signoff, just a quote from Point Break. \u201cYou\u2019re a real blue-flame special, aren\u2019t you, son?\u201d was one. \u201cThe air got dirty and the sex got clean\u201d was another. Once, as I opened a takeaway pizza, I received, with perfect timing: \u201cI\u2019m so hungry I could eat the ass-end out of a dead rhino.\u201d Sometimes I would reply immediately or sometimes let a week slip by before firing off: \u201cLawyers don\u2019t surf\u201d or \u201cDeath on a stick out there, mate.\u201d<\/p>\n
You might say that Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s 1991 action movie helped define who we were, or at least our friendship. Eighteen when it came out, we watched Point Break on spin-cycle at Gary\u2019s house, thrilling to the tale of FBI rookie Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) going undercover as a surfer to flush out the identity of the Ex-Presidents, four guys who don the masks of Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Lyndon B Johnson to hit 27 banks in three years. Utah, a Rose Bowl quarterback before he blew out his knee, and sardonic, burnt-out veteran Pappas (Gary Busey) trace the chemicals in a strand of a suspect\u2019s hair to Latigo Beach, Malibu. \u201cSurfers are territorial, they stick to certain breaks,\u201d Pappas tells Utah, and the bodacious dude from Bill and Ted\u2019s Excellent Adventure \u2013 who\u2019s now, like, totally pumped \u2013 cosies up to surfer gal Tyler (Lori Petty) to infiltrate this tight-knit subculture.<\/p>\n
In my teens, I adored Point Break for Bigelow\u2019s fluent action as the FBI investigation ricochets from one set-piece to the next: dynamic bank heists; an explosive house raid; the greatest foot chase in cinema, the camera mounted on a specially designed \u201cpogo-cam\u201d to charge through back yards and suburban houses, over gates and chain-link fences; and not one but two awe-inspiring skydiving sequences. It wasn\u2019t until some years later that I came to appreciate how Bigelow is undercutting the macho swagger of the Hollywood action movie even as she mounts muscular set-pieces beyond anything mustered by the guys \u2013 even, perhaps, her then partner James Cameron.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
At the centre of the carnage is a bromance between Johnny and lead surfer\/Ex-President Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) that makes Top Gun look straight. \u201cI know you want me so bad, it\u2019s like acid in your mouth,\u201d says our adrenalin-junkie \u201cvillain\u201d, not long after Utah has a chance to shoot him fleeing a heist in his Reagan mask; instead they interminably lock eyes before Johnny discharges his weapon into the air with an animalistic howl. Together they grapple while playing football on the beach, or emerging from the surging sea, or tumbling through the sky at 10,000ft. A shared adrenalin kink pulls them together until they\u2019re all over each other like sex wax on a surfboard. Yes, Bigelow\u2019s film pointedly informs us that surfers apply just this product for traction.<\/p>\n
Each time I watch Point Break now, I wonder how all of this homoeroticism passed my younger self by, but then I need only look at the contemporary reviews to see that everyone else missed it too. \u201cThese two rocketheads \u2026 spend most of the pic trying to throttle or maim each other,\u201d noted Variety, before dismissing their relationship as \u201cnot very interesting\u201d.<\/p>\n
The movie has grown for me in other ways, too. I now understand why Johnny so welcomes ditching his office suit for a wetsuit, hanging on Bodhi\u2019s every mystic-malarkey word as he tells his brahs: \u201cWe stand for something. To those dead souls inching along the freeways in their metal coffins, we show them that the human spirit is still alive.\u201d It\u2019s a philosophy that resonated as I myself took an office job, albeit as a film journalist. And as each decade brought with it more responsibility, I found myself returning to Point Break for the endless blue skies, the sun-soaked beaches, the silver ocean with its gold-crested waves, and the all-night parties on fire-lit beaches. The CGI-heavy 2016 remake could get in the sea; I only have man-hugs for the original.<\/p>\n
Naturally I would text Gary each time I immersed myself into this stirring world. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna be fish food,\u201d I\u2019d send. Or perhaps: \u201cHe\u2019ll take you to the edge. Past it.\u201d Then, two-and-a-half years ago, Gary died of a heart attack, aged 50. It\u2019s a loss I still can\u2019t comprehend, and now I watch Point Break to be close to him. Sometimes I scroll through our messages. The last one was sent at 11.57pm on 29 September 2023, a week before his death. It read, simply: \u201cAre we gonna jump or jerk off?\u201d I never responded, but even now I feel a pull to reply. If I ever do, I know what I\u2019ll write: \u201cAdios, amigo.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 25 years, I received texts from my best friend, Gary, that consisted of no intro, no signoff,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-478437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}