52 quotes found
"If you want the ultimate rush, you've got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. It's not tragic to die doing what you love."
"Feel what the wave is doing. Then accept its energy. Get in sync. Then charge with it."
"I hate this Johnny. I really do. I hate violence. That is why I had Rosie do this, I could never do that man, I could never hold a knife to Tyler's throat, she was my woman, we shared time. But, Rosie, he's like a machine. He's got this gift of blankness. Once you set him in motion, he will not stop. So, when three o'clock comes, he will gut her like a pig, and try not to get any on his shoes and there is nothing I can do."
"You're sayin' the FBI's gonna pay me to learn to surf?"
"I am an F.B.I. Agent."
"Utah, get me two!"
"I'm so hungry I could eat the ass end out of a dead rhino, I should have had you get me three of these things!"
"100% Pure Adrenaline."
"27 banks in three years - anything to catch the perfect wave!"
"In California, you can party, have sex and surf, before it's time to go to work."
"It's not about good guys and bad guys. It's a little more complicated when your good guy-your hero-is seduced by the darkness inside him and your 'villain' is no villain whatsoever, he's more of an anti-hero."
"What’s more, the male-on-female perving is staged as a groan-worthy gag. Johnny is all but tripping over his tongue as he spies on Tyler through binoculars while she changes out of her swimsuit. The film’s admiration for Reeves’ and Swayze’s bodies, on the other hand, is subtler – and coded into every shot. Look out, for instance, for the almost indiscernible drop into slow-motion in the sequence where Johnny showers at the beach: it’s one of the stealthiest phwoars in modern cinema. It’s unlikely that a male director would have had the nerve for this – or that two more established male stars, with hard-won hard-man reputations to defend, would have thrown themselves into it with quite so much gusto. In a promotional interview, Swayze described the film as being miles from “slap-ass, macho, jokey crap…I wanted to play it like a love story between two men.” In 80s action movies, the male body is a weapon of war. Point Breakturns it into a source of pleasure. And pleasure is what Point Break’s leads are chasing. Whether surfing, skydiving, playing American football or robbing banks in rubber masks, it’s all in pursuit of what Tyler purringly calls “the ultimate ride”: a thrill so big it recalibrates your worldview."
"This stuff was so revolutionary that Hollywood took almost a decade to catch up. In some respects, Point Break’s effect on pop culture was immediate: it brought extreme sports into the mainstream and made Reeves the 1990s’ defining action star, just as Bigelow predicted. But it was only ten years later, with the success of The Fast and the Furious – a car-based Point Break remake in all but name – that brotherly love and beautiful men had become ingrained in action-movie culture."
"The bodhi tree, according to the Buddhists, is the tree beneath which one finds enlightenment. That is not exactly how it works with Bodhi, the surfing bank robber who is the existential hero of "Point Break," but he is such a persuasive character that a young FBI agent falls under his spell. Or maybe it is Southern California itself that attracts the agent - that land of surf and skydiving and strange karma, so seductive to a square football hero out of Ohio."
"Bigelow and her crew are also gifted filmmakers. There's a footchase through the streets, yards, alleys and living rooms of Santa Monica; two skydiving sequences with virtuoso photography, powerful chemistry between the good and evil characters, and an ominous, brooding score by Mark Isham that underlines the mood. The plot of "Point Blank," summarized, invites parody (rookie agent goes undercover as surfer to catch bank robbers). The result is surprisingly effective."
"This turns out to be one of those beach bum-cosmic high armed robberies with which Southern California F.B.I. agents are no doubt constantly plagued. And Johnny turns out to be the perfect candidate for the job of surfing detective. He looks good in a wet suit. He figures out how to extract information from a nice-looking female surf expert (Lori Petty). Pretty soon he is showing up at the office saying things like "Caught my first tube this morning, sir." He totes his surfboard with him to prove the point."
"Among the film's especially energetic sequences are a furious two-man chase on foot through a heavily populated neighborhood, shot vigorously with a hand-held camera; sustained and amazing sky-diving scenes guaranteed to make the palms sweat, and a police raid on a house that becomes a wild melee and turns a lawnmower into a potentially deadly weapon. This last episode, and others like it, prove definitively that testosterone-crazed movie violence is by no means the sole province of male directors. Especially fiery and scene-stealing is Gary Busey, as the gruff Nick Nolte-style wild man who is Johnny's F.B.I. partner and foil. Mr. Swayze, more tranquil, is best when showing off his proficiency for glamorous athletics and least good when taking the screenplay seriously. When another character says, of Mr. Swayze's Bodhi, "He's got this gift for blankness," the thought seems all too true."
"The ocean shimmers behind Point Break’s credits, glowing gold. The words Point and Break cross over, merging and dissolving, and so do the names Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi is a silhouette surfing in slow motion against a soft-blue sea as luminous as a Romantic painting, a mythic figure out of time. Meanwhile, Keanu Reeves’s Johnny Utah loads a shotgun in a gray downpour. He fires at paper targets, and an FBI agent clicks a stopwatch. With this opening sequence, Kathryn Bigelow tells us that the very different worlds of an FBI agent and a surfer will collide, that these two men are destined to meet and to change each other."
"Kathryn Bigelow once referred to Point Break as a “wet Western.” If the cowboy prides himself on conquering new frontiers, on taming the wilderness, the surfer prides himself on giving himself to it, to becoming one with it. At Point Break’s end, Johnny Utah finds Bodhi on an Australian beach where the legendary 50-year storm takes place: “twice a century the ocean lets us know just how small we really are.” Johnny has been hunting Bodhi all this time. It’s their final showdown, and they fight as the storm rages on. Johnny handcuffs Bodhi to him as the authorities arrive. But Johnny decides to let him go, honoring Bodhi’s request to ride one last wave. And the ocean seems bluer with Bodhi in it. Johnny looks at his badge, then throws it into the ocean, a move mirroring Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callaghan tossing his badge in Dirty Harry. But Johnny raises a middle finger figuratively to Harry’s brutal machismo, and to rules, control, law and order. Johnny Utah is not quite ready to give himself over to the 50-year storm, but he’s done with the system. He loses his badge, and he gains a soul."
"One of the most numbing things about many movies today is how wildly out of scale they seem to go: the way visual and technical virtuosity is juxtaposed with silly, vacuous stories. "Point Break" (citywide) may be a prime example. It's a movie full of golden, liquid oceanside scenes, aerial ballets, Steadicams flying through packed offices and corridors, massed towering waves crashing down at us—and violent car-crash and gun-battle pyrotechnics splattering all over the screen in bright, violent, bloody shards. It's beautiful, but it's dumb."
"Patrick Swayze - Bodhi"
"Keanu Reeves - FBI Agent Johnny Utah"
"Gary Busey - FBI Agent Angelo Pappas"
"Lori Petty - Tyler Ann Endicott"
"John C. McGinley - FBI Director Ben Harp"
"James LeGros - Roach"
"John Philbin - Nathanial"
"Bojesse Christopher - Grommet"
"Lee Tergesen - Rosie"
"Tom Sizemore - DEA Agent Dietz"
"Anthony Kiedis - Tone"
"Look... everyone needs to take a walk to the dark end of the street sometimes. It's what we are."
"Bullet-resistant? What ever happened to bullet-proof?"
"The issue's not whether you're paranoid, Lenny. I mean, look at this shit. The issue is whether you're paranoid enough."
"You know how I know it’s the end of the world? Everything's already been done. Every kind of music’s been tried. Every kind of government’s been tried, every fucking hairstyle, bubble gum flavors, you know, breakfast cereal. What are we going to do? How are we going to make another thousand years? I’m telling you, man, it’s over. We used it all up."
"Memories are supposed to fade, Lenny. They're designed like that for a reason."
"This is your life — right here, right now! It's real-time. You hear me? Real time! Time to get real, not playback. You understand me?"
"You know one of the ways that movies are still better than playback? 'cause the music comes up, there's credits, and you always know when it's over. [Turns to Lenny] It's over!"
"(rap lyrics) ... and you watch us take it all and then you'll understand our pain! We'll make you the rat that crawled through the cracks. You love that red, white and blue but you hate that black-black-black. And you try to make me think I did this to myself, when the drugs I smoke and the guns I tote both came from your shelf! … But I never had a dream, cuz. My life is a nightmare. America's been my bogey-man for four hundred years!"
"The mayor and the city council sit up in their offices with their social programs that don't work. These people are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but the new day is coming. 2K is coming! The day of reckoning is upon us. History ends and begins again — Right here! Right now!"
"(to the cops) You know what? You pulled over the wrong black male tonight officer — what is it? Steckler — Officer Steckler, because I'm that 800-pound gorilla in your midst, fucker! I make more money in a day than you make in a whole year! And my lawyer loves spending my money dragging sorry-ass Aryan Robocop fuckers like you to court! Get a man down on the ground with no probable cause? Man, fuck you!"
"new year's eve 1999. anything is possible. nothing is forbidden."
"An extreme taste of reality."
"you know you want it"
"Ralph Fiennes as Lenny Nero"
"Angela Bassett as Lornette 'Mace' Mason"
"Juliette Lewis as Faith Justin"
"Tom Sizemore as Max Peltier"
"Michael Wincott as Philo Gant"
"Vincent D'Onofrio as Burton Steckler"
"Glenn Plummer as Jeriko One"
"Brigitte Bako as Iris"