"Vaya Con Dios, Bro!"

I've been neglecting Keanu a little, lately, usually in favour of Clive or Christian and a range of other supporting characters. It doesn't help that much of his back catalogue is pretty cringe-worthy and there are only so many times I can plausibly watch Speed without wanting to tear off my finger-nails--yes, even I can only watch Speed so many times--and weeknights are a little heavy for The Matrix. However, I recently (finally) acquired a copy of Point Break and watched it tonight in all its good-bad glory.

I watch so many serious films that occasionally, it's quite nice to just watch something silly--not a clever comedy, just silly. Silly characters (OK, so it's quite funny that Keanu was supposedly this hot shot at the FBI academy and all of his new work colleagues still think he's a dumb-ass jock), silly plot (the bank robberies, carried out by a group of four robbers who always wear masks of former US presidents which Keanu is trying to solve, almost seem like an annoying sub-plot in comparison to Keanu's totally awesome awakening into the amazing world of surfing), silly dialogue ("you gotta go down, bro!" or "This is your wake-up call! I am an F...B...I...agent!") and other assorted fun. The last scene, in particular, is set on some Aussie beach in monsoon conditions and with waves the size of cruise ships ("a 50-year storm"), is, like, totally melodramatic. Because southern California is just too cheerful and sunny for the final battle of morals and wills so only freak weather conditions Down Under will do. I'll even forgive Keanu for wearing a denim shirt and jeans in the final scene because a) it was 1991 and b) he still looked quite hot, in his bedraggled, early '90s way.

Incidentally, I am so out of touch with late '80s/early 90s' films that I only realised in the credits that Patrick Swayze was playing Keanu's surf buddy Bohdi and not his partner. OK, so I wasn't really paying much attention to the other characters but it's still pretty embarrassing to have mistaken Swayze for Gary Busey.