Point Break is Massively Underrated Even If You Figured Everything Out

Introduction

         Point Break (1991) is one of my favorite movies of all time. I love older action movies because of how real the characters can seem, and even if there are exaggerations, they still have a well defined personality which symbolizes something much deeper in human psychology than what you see with your eyes. I believe Point Break is one of the most significant movies about youth, and more specifically, your 20s. Your 20s is a very important part of your life because it is what defines the direction the rest of your life takes. Point Break should be the official movie of your 20s, as if The Breakfast Club could be the official movie of your teens, because it perfectly illustrates the internal struggle of your 20s caused by unfound purpose. On the other hand, the 2015 remake fails to live up to the impact of the original or blaze its own trail in any way.

Bodhi's Motives and Views on Life

        Thanks to a Reddit post, by a user named -KFBR392, they have made it easy for me to investigate Bodhi's (Patrick Swayze) namesake. Bodhi means "awakening" in Buddhism, and it is a central part of being a Bodhisattva. According to this source,

"Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who have put off entering paradise in order to help others attain enlightenment."

        This description of an enlightened being fits Bodhi's character perfectly. Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) meets Bodhi when Utah, an FBI agent and new to town, is tasked with going undercover to find out who a gang of repeat bank robbers are, and the FBI have found out they surf the beaches of Southern California. As the criminal and cop relationship develops over time to be close friends, Bodhi actively puts Utah first and shows him the path to enlightenment. Despite the troublemakers at the beach who seem to be notorious in the area, Bodhi helps fight them off Roadhouse style for Utah, as he sees something in Utah enough to want to keep him around. Bodhi doesn't stop Utah from pursuing Tyler, Bodhi's ex-girlfriend, who Utah falls in love with when he convinces her to teach him how to surf. Bodhi teaches Utah to skydive. At no point in the movie where if Bodhi even suspected Utah was law enforcement, and even after he found out he was an FBI agent, did Bodhi ever attack Utah or push him away. Bodhi still put Utah first and showed him the light until the very end. Bodhi gave Utah his parachute to skydive, to prove that he wasn't a dishonorable man for giving him a dud, after Utah's cover is blown. Tyler even talks about Bodhi at the beginning when she first meets Utah, confirming that Bodhi is the most honest uncorrupted version of himself.

"That's Bodhi....they call him the Bodhisattva. He's a modern savage, a real searcher."

        Someone who is searching for something can be truly honest with himself, as he is willing to give an opportunity to complete their search. Everything that Bodhi provides for Utah is truthful and from his heart. So why does Bodhi maintain his friendship with Utah anyway? It's not just because Utah was a great former quarterback (and he didn't play for the Arizona Wildcats, good football team).

Utah’s Unfound Purpose

        Bodhi is nice to Utah because Bodhi is a good man, despite being revealed as the leader of the bank robbers. He refrains from killing, and he wants Utah to see the light so Utah can see the world from a higher perspective beyond his own. Bodhi searches for enlightenment by interacting with people to try and seek their knowledge and creativity, just as Tyler described him as a searcher. Bodhi shows Utah everything there is to life: beauty, pain, love, and heartbreak. He describes his philosophy by saying:

"You can do what you want, and make up your own rules. Why be a servant to the law, when you can be its master?"

        This is very direct in a literal sense, but symbolically, this powerfully describes the light that Bodhi sees. Utah is an FBI agent, a servant of the law. Utah is 25 years old and he tells Tyler he is trying to find something for himself without the help of his parents anymore, as he moved a great distance from a seemingly sheltered life. It seems very plausible that this backstory is true to Utah’s character without a lot of tweaking necessary by the FBI to conceal his identity. Utah is like Bodhi, in search. He is no longer a servant to his parents because he is an independent adult. As the movie progresses, Utah realizes that Bodhi is trying to teach him to build his own path, to be a master of his own life, so he takes off the handcuffs and sets Bodhi free to surf the biggest wave on record, supposedly leading to his death. Utah's final words to Bodhi are, "Vaya con Dios," which is used in religious contexts meaning "Go with God." Then, Utah throws away his badge. Bodhi wants Utah to find his path to enlightenment now that he is free because Bodhi never succeeded with his own. Bodhi’s purpose was to hold off entering nirvana so he could show Utah a way to find his own purpose.

        Bodhi runs with bank robbers and disregards the law. What makes him special? Bodhi’s ideas are special because all the action in the movie and all the character’s motives are symbolic. The FBI represents an entity that governs your life with rules. It represents Utah’s parents. Parents will always love their kids the same way, but kids go through stages much more rapidly than parents can adapt. At 25, independent adults do not need their parents anymore. The FBI represents Utah still being held back after leaving his parents, and still having a suppressed inner desire to expand and learn more about life that the FBI cannot provide him. The bank robberies represent Bodhi trying to show Utah a way to break free and it sets up Utah to make choices from his own heart free from the FBI and his parents. Utah has to make the choice to take down Bodhi, not for the FBI, but for himself.

Bodhi’s Unfound Purpose

         Bodhi is that man in his 20s who is searching for something they truly love but cannot find. He moves on from his relationship with Tyler, goes above the law to rob banks, and does incredible stunts to embrace the beauty of nature because he is still searching for enlightenment to figure out what his purpose in life is. Bodhi expresses a level of intelligence far ahead of anyone in the movie. He loves people and he wants to show them the path towards enlightenment, putting them first before his own ego. When someone he knows takes Tyler hostage and records himself threatening her with a knife to scare Utah, Bodhi is heavily against it. He makes sure that Utah knows that he hates seeing her like that, and it is clear he hates torture. Swayze acted that out nicely. You can see it in his face and how he just wants to hit the wall of the airplane as it massively goes against his good character.

         Bodhi’s mind is restless. The world outside the surfing beaches are like a prison cell with nothing else to offer him. Being alone in your own prison surrounded by rules you cannot break will drive you insane. The bank robberies and the violence in Point Break symbolize the violent thoughts that you get when your creativity is killed and you still find yourself under the laws of some authority that doesn’t seem to recognize your existence, and so you don’t understand how to learn new things beyond that authority. Bodhi breaking the law by robbing banks symbolizes his inner violent thoughts from never finding meaning in his life and still being held back by some authority that doesn’t care about him. Bodhi is not acting because he knows his place, Bodhi is acting because he has no place to go, no one to turn to, nothing to dream about, because your dreams die when you were a kid now that no one dictates what direction your life can take anymore. Bodhi's actions and motives illustrate perfectly the struggles of your 20s because it shows he is really a lost soul deep inside trying to find some semblance of hope and meaning before his inner spirit can be burned alive by the fiery spread of psychological napalm. Bodhi represents everyone in their 20s who never found their purpose in life. He represents the psychological apocalypse that occurs after loss of innocence, far after all hope has been lost.

Connection to The Cather in the Rye: A Lost Soul

        This all reminds me of The Catcher in the Rye, the controversial book I had to read in high school. Holden Caulfield is a distraught boy who leaves prep school after being burnt out by the alienation he feels from society. The book follows Holden's adventures around the city where he describes his depressed state of mind and he encounters colorful characters, which he ends up not connecting with very well, and Holden doesn't feel satisfied after talking with them. Lots of kids in school thought Holden was very ungrateful and bratty. But the more you grow up, the more you realize how much truth Holden illustrates. The most important part of the book, which gives it its name, describes something Holden aspires to do. Holden imagines himself in a big field, a cornfield I think, seeing a few kids running around and having fun with each other, smiling. They get so distracted that they run off towards a cliff, and only Holden sees the danger. He rushes over and catches the kids before they tumble off the cliff, saving them. This is symbolic because it means that Holden wants to protect kids from losing their innocence from the evils of society. This is extremely significant because it shows that Holden is still good and he cares about people, even though he cannot connect with anyone in the book on a deep level. In your 20s, this is the exact feeling you get when you never find yourself, when you haven’t fully found your purpose, and you look around at kids all happy and you see that even if you had no purpose, you want to protect the kids. It's like Terminator 2, where even if you were stripped of all your morals and humanity, the Terminator is respectable because he will never hurt John Conner. He will never get drunk and slap John. He will do anything to protect John, even if it means his destruction. Because it is what he is ordered to do. Bodhi similarly has no direction and he loves people. Holden wants to show kids the light just like Bodhi does to people like Utah, to open their eyes. While Holden Caulfield wants to save the kids from the evils of society, Bodhi leans more towards teaching people to make their own unbiased informed decisions. Loving people makes these characters good men. They are trying to find out where they belong, but they can't. Bodhi never found enlightenment, until Utah came along, and he changed him. Everyone before could not offer the level of thought that Bodhi goes through every day in search for his soul.

Point Break Bridges Generations

        One final point to make about Point Break is that it came out during a huge transition in music. After the 1980s, young people got sick and tired of glam metal from hair bands, as it felt more like a look than good music. In came grunge and alternative rock to the mainstream. After listening to many songs from the 1950s-2000s, there is a very important trait about alternative rock that almost doesn't exist pre-1990s. If you look at what you could consider alternative ballads, they are very fluid and they emphasize inner peace and deep thought. On the other hand, pre-1990s rock mostly emphasizes a big flashy chorus and outward love and sex. Think James Bond or any 1980s media like Knight Rider or Top Gun, where leading men toss around hot women like Chinese buffet food. Point Break falls right between these eras. The end credits are by a hair band, Ratt, very 1980s. But the themes of the movie are very much about inner thought like alternative ballads, that makes me think of Audioslave - Shadow on the Sun and I Am The Highway, Evanescence - My Immortal, or Creed - Higher. The movie still fits that hair metal era somehow because it’s like a last breath of the old world, and hair metal would fit perfectly with the action sequences, insane stunts, and partying with rock 'n' roll. Point Break literally bridges genres and cultures, and the fact that it fits so well with alternative music means that Point Break's depiction of your 20s is still perfectly relevant today because as life purpose changes with time, likely everyone has felt lost in their 20s. As the world gets more isolated with social media and AI, does this make Point Break more relevant to your 20s now than in the early 1990s? When the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union dissolved and there was a hope in the world for a better future? Unless the Internet is incorrect about the sentiment at the time, which I wouldn’t be surprised.

The 2015 Remake Is Worse Than Terrible

        The Point Break remake is weak for many reasons. I think it's easier to list them:

1. Focuses too much on the religious part of achieving nirvana. Too preachy. The character's beliefs should be implied to an extent. Show, don't tell, like you might learn in the fourth grade.

2. Bodhi is not a lost soul. Bodhi has a very clear goal, and he embarks on deadly campaigns like Mission: Impossible. It's cinematically impressive, but it just falls flat because of the next point.

3. Fails to capture the struggles of youth. The movie simply depicts a battle between the "terrorists" and the good guy. Bodhi is not a lost soul nor a good man worth letting loose, like he is in the original.

4. Bodhi's philosophy has no redeeming qualities or reason for Utah to be connected with him. Bodhi wants to give resources and money to the poor, so he does his robberies and attacks. There is no depth to it or a sustainable direction. The sheer scale and finances are much larger than just robbing banks in Southern California.

5. The acting was terrible and none of the characters had enough charisma to convince me that their characters stand by their beliefs, or that they struggle or feel joy. Bodhi is just a preachy brick wall.

        The biggest reason for the remake to suck is #2 and #3. Point Break captures the spirit of being lost in your youth, and everything in the movie symbolizes that struggle. The remake is totally opposite, and Bodhi is just some other terrorist who deserves to get killed by Ethan Hunt, Impossible Missions Force. The remake falls into the same trap a lot of newer movies fall into, where it focuses on the wrong things to make the cinematography better and everything you can see better, but totally fails everything behind the scenes.

Conclusion

        Point Break (1991) is a highly underrated movie, even if you think you found out everything about it, simply because Bodhi is an embodiment of the struggle in your 20s, where no one can provide you with higher level ideas to show you the path to enlightenment. You have to find the light by yourself, and it is not something you can find your way by using logic. Suzi Quatro wrote a beautiful song in the 1970s called Cat Size. It is about saying goodbye to your blind eye and searching for your cat's eye. Cats have insane peripheral vision, so they can see the world from a much greater perspective. It's about trying to find where you want to go and where you belong. Patrick Swayze played the role perfectly of someone who hasn't found his place, and he made up for Keanu Reeve's weird stoic acting in a passionate young hotshot. Swayze perfectly captured a bright, charismatic leader who is actually a lost soul looking for enlightenment. If you strip away all the layers of his personality, deep down, Bodhi is just a kid who needs guidance. One day, you're a kid and you look up at these older guys trying to understand what they do and learn. Next, you're in your 20s and you see how these guys are just chugging along like you are, sure, the parties look cool. Then, you're way beyond your 20s and you look down at these dumb kids who have no direction and you wonder what will become of them. Point Break is the best depiction of your 20s and I hope to find my cat's eye.