Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #785 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-06-30
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 117 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A rash of daring bank robberies erupt in which the bad guys all wear the masks of worse guys--former presidents (nice touch). Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), an impossibly named former football star who blew out his knee and became a studly crime-busting fed instead, figures out that none of the heists occur during surfing season and all of them occur when, so to speak, surf's down. So obviously, he reasons, we're dealing with some surfer-dude bank robbers. He goes undercover with just such a group, led by a very spiritual, very guru-type guy played by Patrick Swayze, who has some muddled philosophies when it comes to materialism. If you can buy all that, this efficiently directed (by Kathryn Bigelow) action flick has some diverting moments (credit it, for example, for anticipating the extreme-sports fad). But Reeves' intelligent-sounding lines don't make him seem remotely intelligent and that plot makes him look positively brilliant. --David Kronke

Amazon.co.uk Review
Efficiently directed by Kathryn Bigelow and featuring some diverting action scenes, 1991's Point Break can be credited with anticipating the extreme-sports fad. A rash of daring bank robberies erupt in which the bad guys all wear the masks of worse guys--former presidents (nice touch). Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), an impossibly named former football star who blew out his knee and became a crime-busting federal agent instead, figures out that none of the heists occur during surfing season and all of them occur when, so to speak, surf's down. So obviously, he reasons, we're dealing with some surfer-dude bank robbers. He goes undercover with just such a group, led by a very spiritual guru-type Patrick Swayze, who has some muddled philosophies when it comes to materialism. Reeves' intelligent-sounding lines don't make him seem remotely intelligent, but the plot makes him look positively brilliant. --David Kronke

Special Features
2.35 Wide Screen
16:9 Wide Screen
DVD 5
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Dolby Digital 2.0
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
Original Theatrical Trailer

Customer Reviews

Point out the conventions of the crime thriller genre
Keanu Reeves (The Matrix) stars as Johnny Utah, a newly recruited agent who is assigned an undercover task to seek out "The Presidents", a group of professional bank robbers, which leads Utah into a trail of high adrenaline stunts, romance and friendship, testing his strength to the maximum.

The crime genre has changed over the last couple of decades, with more CGI, gun fights and showdowns encoded for high octane viewing, and this Kathryn Bigelow (Near dark) justifies most conventions in a typical crime thriller.

Far from their best performances in the careers, Reeves and Swayze (Dirty dancing) are headlined as the stars of the show and fulfil the male icon, the tough cop and the sophisticated cool dude, and though the relationship between the characters is interesting, it doesn't have enough personality to cope with the dialogue and changes in the plot to make it dramatic enough.

However, Swayze's character Bodhi has an interesting perspective on life, on the freedom of society and to live for breathtaking moments, which does make his character intriguing and one of the reasons to carry on watching, even though the plot tails on an off all the way through.

With typical manly conventions such as guns, fighting, drinking and swearing all encoded, this film is a real guy film, though a soppy cliché of a romantic story is thrown in, like every other crime film out there and being a fan of the crime thriller genre I was disappointed, given the sceptical of surfing as an interesting sub story. The plot is inconsistent and doesn't do much justice to the genre, with poor direction in fights and chases and such.

Despite its faults, it can still be entertaining for guys who like adrenaline and typical male heroes and so forth, but for me it was poorly scripted, pretty predictable, clichéd, like every other crime film, and with very little different from any other new cop, new challenge, conflicted feelings film.

6/10

What a load of Rubbish!!!!!!!!!!!
Heard a lot about this film so I finally watched it......... it's like a B movie... Reeves is like a cartoon character in this film. The story-line's a bit boring and the acting is abysmal. It's one of the cheesiest films I've ever seen

Macho rubbish
A real Boy's Own film - surfers, bank robbers, gung ho FBI & scenes of untrained free spirits in free fall from aircraft! A celebration of blokish youth - if you like that sort of thing.