In 2009, Kathryn Bigelow became the first (and thus far only) female-identified person to win an Academy Award for Best Director. For The Hurt Locker. A travesty. Sure, The Hurt Locker is a fine film, but Bigelow should have won that damned golden man eighteen years earlier for Point Break!

For those not in the know, Point Break is a movie that outlandishly encapsulated ’90s action cinema. Explosions. Undercover Cops. Extreme sports. And of course, in the eternal words of the perhaps literally eternal Keanu Reeves… “Babes.”

But it’s not so much the ‘babes’ or the bombs that give Point Break its timeless essence… It is the bros and their endearing bro-love. It’s the surprising sensitivity to the characters. Reeves has never been much of an emoter, but here he gives it his all. Also, there’s surfing! (And, per usual, taut action filmmaking by genre master Kathryn Bigelow).

Now, as Hollywood is wont to do, Point Break has been remade. A poor simulacrum of the original product. In an interview with the great but now-defunct publication The Dissolve, Keanu himself touched on the remake and the legacy of the original. “Maybe when things become classics,” he said, “they’re open to modern-day interpretation. So hopefully, their interpretation of this classic will be cool.”

Unfortunately it was not. But I’m glad that Keanu himself sees the timeless quality of his dude-love action movie. And I hope the day comes where the story is properly retooled and we get a thrilling, prescient remake of this timeless tale.

Hint: Hollywood please hire me to pen the Point Break remake where it is overtly romantic and the action is even more off the wall. Please. 

Point Break
1991
dir. Kathryn Bigelow
120 min.

Screens Saturday, 4/29 at 11:59 pm @ Coolidge Corner Theatre.