We’ve been given our first glimpse at the remake of one of Hollywood’s greatest action films – and it doesn’t look very good.
Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow’s classic 1991 thriller starring Keanu Reeves as an undercover FBI agent who infiltrates Patrick Swayze's surfing gang, has been given the ‘gritty reboot’ treatment with the finished film due to arrive at the end of the year.
But while the action quotient seems to have been upped and the number of dangerous activities expanded from just surfing, after watching the new clip we just wanted to go and watch the original instead.
Here’s where the remake trailer fails:
1) There’s no fun
Point Break (the 1991 version) is full of thrills, spills, epic wipe-outs and a surprisingly emotional story, but it’s also full of charm and knowing lines. Remember the scene where Johnny Utah stops his rival agent Ben Harp’s rant to remind him that “the correct term is babes”? Well, you can forget that. The new film looks deathly serious.
2) It looks so drab
Yes, the new trailer is crisp and full-HD with flashy CGI, but the whole thing is visually stone-cold. There’s a grey and blue palette here that’s nothing on the sunburnt surf hues of the original.
3) The dialogue is terrible
The lines we hear in the new trailer aren’t even enjoyably rubbish. “I believe that, like me, the people behind these robberies are extreme athletes” is an absolute clunker whichever way you slice it.
4) There are barely any surfing scenes
And the ones that are there look like CGI. If the above shot is real then fair play – it’s impressive. But you could feel the spray, the saltiness of the sea, the physicality of surfing in the original, where the new clips look so clinical.
5) There’s nobody firing their gun up in the air shouting ‘aaaaargh!’
Hot Fuzz’s PC Danny Butterman wouldn’t stand for this – he’d just stick the original on back-to-back with Bad Boys 2.
Now, let’s all watch the original trailer again and remind ourselves why we loved Point Break in the first place.
Point Break arrives in UK cinemas on January 8, 2016
