If ever there was a time for a well-placed "Noooooo!" it's now, upon the news that Alcon Entertainment and Warner Bros. are planning to remake Kathryn Bigelow's seminal 1991 surfing themed cop thriller Point Break. What have the producers got planned and what has it got to do with Salt and gun-fu?
To answer the latter question, the Point Break remake will be scripted by Kurt Wimmer, director of such slick, silly actioners as Equilibrium and Ultraviolet and the scribe behind recent films like Salt, Law Abiding Citizen, and the Total Recall remake.
Consider the updated plot, which will be set "in the world of international extreme sports and also involve an FBI agent infiltrating a criminal ring." Here, Wimmer had better tread carefully: "extreme sports" have evolved in vast and often douchier ways since the days of infiltrating bromantic surfer dudes in Southern California. Can you picture Johnny Utah taking up, say, street luge in the name of catching notorious athlete-robbers?
Of course, any number of extreme sports could pop up in the sequel: Whitewater kayaking! Aggressive inline skating! Whatever it is that James Franco is doing in the desert in 127 Hours! But maybe it won't matter which extreme sport the Point Break remake hinges on, since what made Point Break great had nothing to do with surfing, per se. It was all in that elemental, tortured man-love between Johnny and his Bodhi, highlighted vividly and poignantly against the muscular backdrop of '90s action sensibilities. Relive a highlight from the O.G. Point Break below (and here) and cross your fingers that the remake does it some justice.
• 'Point Break' to Be Remade by Alcon and Warner Bros. [THR]