Product: Point Break [VHS] (1991)
Rating: 5.0
Exhilirating, Artistic, Great Entertainment
"Point Break" is Bigelow at her best. It has wonderful artistic moments ,with the waves used by the villainous surfers, as well as a group parachuting scene with the hero and villains all holding hands in a circle in the air. The actors are well paired with both Keanu Reeve as the hero FBI agent who learns how to surf to catch the ex-Presidents bank robbers. Patrick Swayze, in his best role, plays a guru philosopher surfer who heads up the bank robbers, wearing a Ronald Reagan mask during the armed robberies. The bank robberies by the 4 surfers in their ex-presidents' masks verge on the hilarious. The final surfing footage with Swayze and Reeve in Australia is breathtaking. "Point Break" is well worth owning. Writer-director Kathryn Bigelow was a very talented painter before she went to film school to become a movie director. It shows in her work which is very artistic for someone primarily known to the action-adventure genre of filmmaking. She is a breath of fresh air in this genre, investing it with literate scripts and haunting imagery. Her most frequent producer is James Cameron (the action wonder king, "Titanic," "Terminator"), who is also her ex-husband. You can see his influence on her work as well.