Point Break reboot misses the point

FOR this week's sign that the apocalypse is upon us, look no further than Point Break, which has the next-to-impossible task of trying to emulate a beloved original. It's not quite the same as remaking Citizen Kane but someone in his infinite wisdom decided that a reboot of the 1991 film Point Break would be a good idea - the same Point Break that is firmly entrenched in the iconography of contemporary cinema as an awesome cult classic.

That film, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, starred Keanu Reeves as rookie FBI agent Johnny Utah going deep undercover to catch Patrick Swayze as Bodhi, a philosophy-spouting surfer dude whose idea of rebelling against the system is to rob banks. The film enhanced Swayze's leading man status, jump-started Reeves's action-movie career and showcased Bigelow's (The Hurt Locker, 2009; Zero Dark Thirty, 2012) prowess at staging adrenaline-fuelled action scenes.

The new (though not-necessarily improved) version of Point Break, directed by Ericson Core and written by Kurt Wimmer, is built on a variety of impressively filmed extreme sports sequences, starting with the opening scene of a pair of motocross riders zipping along a narrow ridge before leaping across a void to an impossibly small landing area. This is followed by increasingly outrageous stunts involving riding bikes out of high-rises, skydiving from a cargo plane, surfing a monster wave, base jumping off a mountain and free-climbing an impossibly steep rock face.