Willis could have had Lethal Weapon and Gibson Die Hard; a hot take follows that Willis in 1986 was not believable as a super soldier, while his Die Hard hero is streetwise. — Chris Ryan
Willis looks like an everyman while Gibson looks cut from limestone; one host would have loved to see them switch, likened to a Brady-Brees swap. — Bill Simmons
Gibson turned down The Fly and The Untouchables for this film. — Bill Simmons
Gibson pursued Bond in The Living Daylights, but Broccoli turned him down for not being British and Timothy Dalton was cast; Dalton's Bond films are debated and called terrible. — Bill Simmons
Brosnan was held to Remington Steele and had to wait about ten years for Bond. — Bill Simmons
After the $250,000 script purchase, Ridley Scott was considered but had Blade Runner tensions with Warner Brothers; Leonard Nimoy was busy with Three Men and a Baby; Donner got it. — Bill Simmons
Brian Dennehy was lined up for Murtaugh but did not want to play a cop again; F/X is praised as influential. — Bill Simmons
The Joshua role was offered to Steve Railsback and John Saxon; Busey, ice cold after his Buddy Holly Story nomination, auditioned and lost weight. — Bill Simmons
Shane Black wanted William Hurt as Riggs; Hurt would play a damaged vet, not a super soldier, and a Hurt-Dennehy version would be a movie few watch. — Bill Simmons
The Christmas-tree drug bust opens the list, with the 'this is a real fucking gun' badge exchange called amazing.
Two scenes establish Riggs, whose introduction has him swallowing cocaine off a switchblade; the Christmas element is called bigger here than in Die Hard. — Chris Ryan
Riggs's Three Stooges bit and cocaine use flip the usual cop-movie arc; his 'shoot him' standoff before turning it on the dealer is called brilliant. — Chris Ryan
The handcuff jump with the jumper is next: it has no plot need but proves how crazy Riggs is and poses whether he is chasing a psycho pension or truly suicidal. — Bill Simmons
Viewers forget the jump is coming, jumps onto the big inflatable cushion are always great, and the cushion is never shown being set up. — Chris Ryan
The jumper is wished to have been a known actor, like Ellis from Die Hard. — Bill Simmons
The post-dinner talk in a boat parked in the driveway is the chemistry scene that shows why the movie works. — Bill Simmons
The desert exchange feels Joel Silver-ish; its location (White Sands or the Mojave) is a drive of hours from downtown L.A., and one host had it in nitpicks; Riggs's sniper work there is enjoyed despite 1987 communication limits. — Bill Simmons
Riggs's escape through the strip-joint and 101 freeway shootout is called 11 incredible nonstop minutes; the torture scene with Busey is 'all of the 80s in one room'. — Bill Simmons
The strip-club shooting reflects a rough decade for pedestrians in action movies, and the 101 shootout is underrated; taking over that stretch of freeway is marvelled at. — Bill Simmons
Riggs is judged faster than 1986 Cruise in a sprint and barefoot for the last half hour without the problems of Die Hard's hero; Robert Patrick in Terminator 2 tops the running hierarchy. — Bill Simmons
The front-yard fight ('would you like a shot at the title?') is a favorite despite the many implied violations; research says four more minutes of the fight were cut. — Bill Simmons
It ends with the 80s trope of the villain getting up to be shot one last time; Joshua winning then would have topped the 2004 Red Sox comeback. — Bill Simmons
Final pick: everything from Riggs's escape through the 101 shootout. — Bill Simmons
The other pick is Hunsaker's killing and the helicopter shootout, with Riggs emptying two clips toward the ocean; Shane Black redid it in Iron Man 3, and Hunsaker is shot through the eggnog. — Chris Ryan
The cliffside helicopter pullback is praised; Palos Verdes is the location guess, and a mid-80s run of helicopter stunts (Airwolf, Blue Thunder) is recalled. — Bill Simmons
Busey, doing the 'Elvis Aaron Hemphill' speech (as transcribed), is the easy pick: a heat-check era after Point Break when he tried to reinvent himself as a crazy character actor, and he is one of the worst parts of the film.
Brimley is his own planet in the film: the hosts quote his 'oral and whatnot' speech, note that Hackman was five years older yet Brimley seemed born at fifty, recall him as the Quaker Oats man and the manager in The Natural, and perform his catalog monologue, which the Ringer's president Jeff Chow does best.
Brimley had never played a bad guy before, brings an unexpected edge, and the blockbuster hinges on him checking whether the fax machine has paper; it is traumatic to watch Cruise fall on him and kick him, and whether he died is left for unanswerable questions.
Brimley carried himself like a hated stepfather and makes the office scene before the chase feel like Mitch is about to be killed; the 'oral and whatnot' line is recited again and he is declared the winner.
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
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.
On Lori Petty, one host does not know who she is beyond Tyler; her credits come up, League of Their Own, Free Willy, Patty Mayonnaise and Orange is the New Black; one host offers Tank Girl as the apex, as the moment someone thought she could carry a movie, another objects that Tank Girl tanked, and one goes with Patty Mayonnaise, so no yes for this film.
Her look in the film is called a leftover eighties one, like the Legend of Billie Jean, short hair and a little androgynous, and the hosts note she resembles Woody Harrelson, with a host choosing words carefully about a scene with Utah's FBI badge.
Gary Busey is a no: one host offers Surviving the Game, another calls the Buddy Holly story the correct answer because of the Oscar nomination, and another goes with Eye of the Tiger, in which a biker gang kills his wife and daughter after he comes back from Nam and goes to prison.
Keanu Reeves is a no way; his apex is debated as The Matrix or John Wick 2, and one host, expecting the others to be mad, says Speed, the 94 smash hit that created the early-released summer action movie and that he carries in nearly every scene; John Wick 2 is floated again as the global-superstar answer.
In Speed he took a different cop role, cutting his hair and bulking up to look squared away like a Marine, and Bullock is fantastic in it, which makes sense of her becoming a massive star.
Swayze is a yes when asked whether this is his apex: he is in the Milky Way galaxy in this movie, with a box score of 37, 12 and 15 on Isaiah Thomas minutes; a host recalls Michael Douglas on the Ghosts in the Darkness (as transcribed) DVD commentary describing the ideal role, talked about early, appearing a third of the way in and dying at the end, which is what Bodhi was.
A Roadhouse case follows: it still has to be Roadhouse, because watching Roadhouse makes you need to be Patrick Swayze, to become Dalton; another calls it the hardest one, likening Point Break to winning the title on a great team and Roadhouse to Kobe carrying the 2006 Lakers to 48 wins, number 8 Kobe versus number 24 Kobe.
Utah's water tackle of Bodhi; Bodhi's 'never about money' speech; Busey's 'LA's changed' line; the lawnmower in the gunfight; the first Fast and Furious as a Point Break copy
Candidates include Utah's water tackle of Bodhi and Gary Busey playing someone with a job and credibility, but the hosts push back: Busey is actually good, the chemistry with Utah is well written and acted, and he is like the reporter in The Incredible Hulk with the right theory nobody believes.
The old-cop, young-cop gimmick is flipped: instead of the veteran teaching the rookie to calm down, the young cop gets the old cop mad on purpose so he can feel something again and work the theory; a host jokes that Titus does that to them.
Bodhi's speech that it was never about money but about standing against the system, showing the dead souls inching along the freeways in their metal coffins that the human spirit is alive, is read out; it is called a little awkward and over the top for a bank-robbing surfer, while another jokes about getting it tattooed.
For over-the-top lines, Gary Busey staring into the distance saying LA has changed in 22 years, the air got dirty, the air got cleaner, is offered.
One host does not feel anything in the movie has aged badly, since it all fits; another names the lawnmower in the gunfight, adding that a man keeps mowing the lawn during a massive gun battle, and the naked woman beats everyone up, earning a joke Best Supporting Actress.
The first Fast and Furious has aged worst, since watching Point Break closely shows it was ripped off beat by beat, right down to the Coronas; a host saw an unverified claim that the restaurant where Keanu meets Lori Petty is the same one where Dom and Brian sit down.
The candidates are all the bank robbers, the parachute scene, Swayze versus Keanu (compared with Cage versus Travolta, two actors at relatively the same spot), and the concept of a 50-year storm, which a host still enjoys and once tried to Google the next occurrence of.
The last candidate is whoever came up with bank robbers in ex-president masks, called great and the number one movie mask; the film could be made now with Donald Trump and George W. Bush masks.
The president masks are unquestionably better than the Halloween Michael Myers mask or the Scream mask; the runner-up masks are the nuns in The Town and the painters in Dead Presidents.
Pick: the Swayze-Keanu thing, from a host who came late to Point Break three or four years ago after watching other Keanu and Swayze movies and realizing Gary Busey was in it too; the second answer is the Richard Nixon impression, with a wish to see the audition tapes.
Another agrees the Swayze-Keanu pairing is the hook and has aged like a fine wine ('fine line' as transcribed): tell a stranger Swayze, Keanu, surfers, bank robbers and Gary Busey and they are in; it is like Bird and Magic finally meeting in the 84 finals.
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.
One host takes the parachute scene because it holds every part of the movie in three minutes: the two men battling for alpha-male status, Keanu backing down as Bodhi out-crazies him, the injury, and Bodhi letting the injured Utah know he has been beaten while staying just out of reach.
Picks the beach football game because it grounds these counterculture characters, who look weird and spout philosophical things, in an American tradition: good old American boys playing football on the beach. — Jason Concepcion
The football game also shows Bodhi's magnetic charisma, and when it devolves into Utah versus Bodhi, Utah earns his respect; it is a great introduction scene, with Bodhi's 'You don't know who this is?'
Another backs the first bank robbery, the stakeout: Busey sends Utah for two meatball subs ('give me two'), and at the very end Utah has the shot on Bodhi and does not take it, the moment the movie becomes a psychological contest with Bodhi holding the upper hand.
A host says 'I've changed my opinion' and goes with the beach football game, a scene they stay for even when the family is heading out to dinner, adding 'as you said' that it introduces the crew through the old eighties formula of bringing the new guy into the group with a contrived activity; the speaker is not identified.
The football scenes are hilarious: Keanu shows the seeds of The Replacements, scrambling like a little white Mike Vick; Swayze sacks him off the edge like DeMarcus Ware; Keanu sheds seven or eight tacklers and runs Swayze down after 840 yards, out of bounds and into the water.
When the surfers rush over and Bodhi introduces Johnny Utah as all-conference, the hosts say the writers could have made him a Heisman finalist, doubt surfers on the beach every day knew who he was, and one defends it because he beat SC in the Rose Bowl, so Southern California fans would know.
