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The Rewatchables ·

Point Break

year 1991decade 90sdirector Kathryn Bigelowgenre Drama
host Bill Simmonshost Shea Serranohost Jason Concepcionhost Mark Titus
All 12 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 13:33

The beach football game

Candidate one is the beach football game, which one host has analyzed enough to nearly keep score: heavy air yardage to Lori Petty wide open in the end zone, unclear light from the car headlights, an offensive and a defensive line unheard of in backyard football, and Keanu always having time although Swayze nailed him once.

Other candidates: the surfer brawl, where Anthony Kiedis turns out to be one of the dudes, shoots himself in the foot and Busey has to intervene; the big bank robbery leading to the foot chase, the moderator's own preference; the airplane and parachute scene; the airport shootout; and the ending.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 46:53

"Young, dumb, and full of cum"

Nominees: 'I am an FBI agent', 'via condios' (as transcribed), McGinley's 'You're a real blue flame special, aren't you, son? Young, dumb and full of calm' (as transcribed), 'six seconds we're gonna be meat waffles', and Keanu's 'you crossed the line' speech about people who trusted Bodhi dying.

The film

Point Break (1991)

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow · Drama

122 minutes

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Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Patrick Swayze Bodhi "Bodhisattva"
Keanu Reeves FBI Agent Johnny Utah
Gary Busey FBI Agent Angelo Pappas
Lori Petty Tyler Ann Endicott
John C. McGinley FBI Director Ben Harp
James LeGros Roach
John Philbin Nathaniel
Lee Tergesen Rosie
Vincent Klyn Lupton "Warchild" Pittman
Chris Pedersen "Bunker" Weiss
Dave Olson Archbold
Galyn Gorg Margarita
Sydney Walsh Miss Deer
Anthony Mangano Off Duty Cop at Bank
Mike Genovese FBI Instructor Corey
Jack Kehler FBI Technician Halsey
Christopher Pettiet 15-Year-Old Kid at Surfboard Shop
Peter Phelps Aussie Surfer
Tom Sizemore DEA Agent Deets (uncredited)

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

10:32

Casting What-Ifs

Ridley Scott was set to make it in 1986 with Matthew Broderick as Johnny Utah and Charlie Sheen as Bodhi; after four ...

Ridley Scott was set to make it in 1986 with Matthew Broderick as Johnny Utah and Charlie Sheen as Bodhi; after four years in turnaround the producers wanted Charlie Sheen or Johnny Depp in the Keanu role; Catherine Bigelow insisted on Keanu Reeves; Keanu over Depp

In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 00:10:32Read transcript
  • In 1986 Ridley Scott was supposed to make Point Break with Matthew Broderick in the Keanu Reeves role and Charlie Sheen as Bodhi, which the hosts call a very bad look.
  • Broderick as Johnny Utah does not work: picture him in the beach football scene, or playing basketball in The Cable Guy; Ferris Bueller cannot be a former football superstar, so the whole script would have to change.
  • Ridley Scott moved on and the film sat in turnaround for four years; when it was made in 1991 the producers wanted Charlie Sheen or Johnny Depp in the Keanu role, but Catherine Bigelow (as transcribed) said Keanu Reeves was her guy because she saw him as an action star.
  • Asked Johnny Depp or Keanu Reeves for the lead, the answer is Keanu: the role needs the doofus surfer voice and airheadedness played completely seriously without blending the two, which only Keanu can do, whereas Depp would have done it well and accidentally turned into a surfer for real.
  • Another agrees with everything said: Depp would have taken it a little too seriously, while Keanu had the unintentional comedy part of it; Depp as a football quarterback might have been its own unintentional comedy.
  • Nobody can picture Depp running, much less chasing Swayze sixty yards down the longest football field of all time, shedding nine blockers; the joke is that a quarterback who can tackle like that must have thrown a lot of picks, capped with 'Ohio State, baby.'
  • Early on, while setting up who Keanu was in 1991, a host mentions reading that Matthew Roderick (as transcribed) was considered for the Keanu role and is told this steps on the half-assed internet research corner.
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28:04

Half-Assed Internet Research

Working titles Johnny Utah and Riders on the Storm; Keanu Reeves had never surfed and later took it up; Swayze had su...

Working titles Johnny Utah and Riders on the Storm; Keanu Reeves had never surfed and later took it up; Swayze had surfed only a couple of times; Lori Petty had never been in the ocean; two real surfers among the ex-presidents; Swayze really skydived, over 30 jumps, until a cease and desist; a body double in the foot chase while Swayze promoted Ghost; Swayze cracked four ribs; surf scenes at Latigo Beach in Malibu and the finale at Indian Beach in Oregon; Catherine Bigelow said Bodhi died

In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 00:28:04Read transcript
  • Point Break was first called Johnny Utah, the working title for years, then Riders on the Storm, which the studio liked less and which brings the Doors song to mind; Point Break is called a perfect, short, fast action title.
  • Guesses no when asked whether Keanu Reeves had surfed before this movie. — Mark Titus
  • Keanu had not surfed and learned for the film; Swayze had surfed a couple of times but was not good yet; Lori Petty had never been in the ocean; the researcher admits not being positive any of it is true.
  • The ex-president crew included two real surfers who were not actors; Swayze really did his own skydiving out of the plane; Keanu took up surfing as a hobby afterwards; a body double was used for Swayze in the foot chase because he was overseas promoting Ghost.
  • Swayze became Bodhi during filming, cracked four ribs, did almost all of his chase scenes and over 30 parachute jumps until the production company issued a cease and desist; in the end fight he really kicks Keanu in the chest, with the camera staying on Keanu's face.
  • The surf scenes were mostly shot at Latigo Beach in Malibu, but the final scene was not shot at Bells Beach, home of the 50-year storm; it was Indian Beach in Oregon, which bums a host out.
  • Added late: Catherine Bigelow, the director, said in an interview that Bodhi did die at the end, which the hosts jokingly call a spoiler.
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41:46

Picking Nits

MythBusters on 90 seconds of free fall and mid-air conversation; pulling the chute 30 feet from the ground; the surfe...

MythBusters on 90 seconds of free fall and mid-air conversation; pulling the chute 30 feet from the ground; the surfers recognizing Johnny Utah; Keanu handcuffing Swayze in the water; Utah sent alone to an international criminal; the length of the beach football field; spotting surfers by tan lines on black-and-white cameras; Utah never fixing his knee; Keanu and Busey as bad police; the unacknowledged body count; Bodhi's 200-person party; Bodhi never standing up on the last wave

In the discussion (10)
Approx. transcript time · 00:41:46Read transcript
  • MythBusters on the Discovery Channel found that the pair could not have free-fallen for 90 straight seconds and could not have held an intelligible conversation while falling together.
  • One host disagrees about conversation, recalling a tandem skydive where the instructor on the jumper's back screamed in the jumper's ear and could be heard; a joke asks whether that was God.
  • MythBusters also found it realistic to jump out of the plane and grab the other man as Keanu does, which shocks the hosts; they doubt pulling a parachute 30 feet from the ground and joke that being grabbed in free fall would feel like a Game of Thrones dragon.
  • Further nits: none of the surfers recognizing Johnny Utah; Keanu somehow handcuffing Swayze in the water in the final fight; letting an American cop go alone to talk to an international criminal while backup hangs two miles back; a beach football field almost as long as the Fast Six runway.
  • Utah spotting that the robbers might be surfers from tan lines on black-and-white bank security cameras is doubted, though he also had the sand, and a parent of beach-going boys concedes a distinct tan line.
  • Why didn't Keanu just get his knee fixed, with Dr. James Andrews around in the early nineties? The injury, bent back 90 degrees with two years of surgery, is likened to Marcus Lattimore or Willis McGahee.
  • The main issue after 25 viewings: Keanu and Gary Busey are terrible police who miss everything, the bank is robbed while they read a comic and buy sandwiches, and Keanu gets beaten by everyone he fights, including the naked woman, before tackling a man out of a window.
  • Everybody dies and nobody talks about it: Bodhi causes at least ten deaths yet the hosts still root for him to surf the last wave, and it is a flaw that Utah gets out of robbing a bank that left four people dead; a host also doubts Bodhi knows enough people to throw a 200-person party, though as a bank robber he is also the life of the party.
  • Earlier, during the beach football scene, a host was dubious that surfers on the beach every day would know who Johnny Utah was.
  • Going back to nits during unanswerable questions: Bodhi never gets up on the surfboard at the end; a host wanted him to ride it for a few seconds before crashing, which would have been a better and more symbolic ending, perhaps a deleted scene.
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49:07

Probably Unanswerable Questions

Is this the best surfing movie ever?; Is it a surf movie or a bank robbery movie?; Why did Utah quit the FBI?; Why do...

Is this the best surfing movie ever?; Is it a surf movie or a bank robbery movie?; Why did Utah quit the FBI?; Why does Bodhi hit the vault at the end?; What would it take to jump out of a plane without a parachute?; Is that the craziest thing anyone has done in an action movie?; Did Bodhi die?; How good was Johnny Utah at Ohio State?; Why don't movies carry characters across films?; Why do we love bank robbery movies?; What is the best bank robbery scene of all time?; Would a Netflix series have beaten the remake?; Did Bodhi take a bigger cut?

In the discussion (11)
Approx. transcript time · 00:49:07Read transcript
  • Is this the best surfing movie ever? Alternatives come up, the one about the girl with one arm, Blue Crush, Endless Summer and Chasing Mavericks with Gerard Butler; a movie cannot only be a surfer movie, and this one is a bank robbery surfing movie, which is why it stands alone.
  • Why did Utah quit the FBI at the end? He had internalized Bodhi's dead-souls-on-the-freeway philosophy, which he had been looking for all along, and wanted to surf; he may also have realized he is a terrible cop who went undercover without changing his famous name and wore no mask on the stakeout, things The Fast and the Furious did better.
  • Why does Bodhi hit the vault at the end and betray his philosophy? Perhaps he had started to truly hate himself and was self-destructive, trying to die for the last ten minutes after ordering Rosie to kill a woman.
  • What chain of events would it take to jump out of an airplane without a parachute? Zero; asked about twin boys pushed out of the plane, the answer jokes about having another kid. It is called the single craziest believable thing in an action movie, more plausible than Dom diving off a crashing car to catch Letty, because Utah's fearless character is built to make it believable.
  • Did Bodhi actually die at the end? Yes. A host points out that the film opens alternating between Utah in a rainy FBI field test and Bodhi surfing and ends with both in the same situation, Bodhi surfing until he died and Utah in the FBI until he was not; the host who called it a bad movie is said to have walked that back.
  • How good was Johnny Utah at Ohio State? He was all-conference and wore number nine; Johnny Utah jerseys are seen around the Columbus campus; in the early era of athletic quarterbacks like Randall Cunningham he might have been a second-round pick rather than an Elway or Andrew Luck, and probably the greatest Ohio State quarterback to that point, with Troy Smith's Heisman noted.
  • Why don't movies carry characters over? Keanu in The Replacements could have been Johnny Utah instead of Shane Falco, a former FBI agent, and Bodhi could have been Dalton, who lost his mind after Kelly Lynch left him.
  • Why do we love bank robbery movies so much? Free money, the excitement of imagining it even in Baby Driver, and ripping off a building rather than hurting people, taking down the man and the system.
  • What is the best bank robbery scene of all time? The bank robbery that goes bad in Heat and leads to the shootout, recalled from the Heat Rewatchables as feeling like people were shooting in the theater; another host leans toward the opening of Dark Knight, with the robbers killing each other and the bus escape.
  • Raised late as a forgotten unanswerable question: would a Netflix series about bank-robbing surfers and an infiltrating FBI agent have been better than the remake? Way better, with episodes for Lori Petty, the football backstory and the gang partying and surfing in Thailand, Australia and Goa.
  • Did Swayze get a bigger cut than everybody? He was democratic and they all got the same, whereas LeBron as a bank robber would take 35 percent.
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