POINT BREAK
Review by David Jackson
It's been 23 years since Kathryn Bigelow's POINT BREAK caught the attention of action cinema fans everywhere and earned its place in the pantheon of great action films, but coming back to it ahead of its screening at this year's Cambridge Film Festival, what stands out is how contemporary and subversive its attitude to machismo is.
The driving force behind the film's plot is a series of unerringly stupid decisions made by the male characters who are driven solely by a warped sense of masculinity. This is apparent in the aggressive and crude language of the FBI agents, the violence of some of the surfers and in the arrogant ideology of the antagonist Bodhi, who is expertly played by Patrick Swayze.
In a more run-of-the-mill action film this could be leveled as criticism but Kathryn Bigelow has made a film that spotlights this absurdity. No matter how great the action, how daring the stunts or how bloody the shoot-out nothing is ever achieved by the characters. The outcome for the antagonist and protagonist would have likely been the same without the events of the film taking place. It really works as a cutting criticism of the macho action film and at times even verges on parody yet always manages to stay on the right side of that line.
Keanu Reeves manages to toe the line too between surfer dude and buttoned-up FBI agent. It is a performance that isn't subtle but is perfectly matched to the film as a whole. In particular the recurrent football injury that continually holds back the hero is wonderfully symbolic of the message of the film, that in pursuit of an imagined masculinity they only end up hurting themselves.
It more than earns its place in this year's Fierce Frames strand at the festival as it is an important example of just how much a strong female voice can add both on and off the screen. As Tyler (Lori Petty), the film's sole female character, puts it in perhaps the most telling line of the film; “there's too much testosterone here”.