The role Patrick Swayze called a “once-in-a-blue-moon character”
Patrick Swayze was one of those actors who absolutely excelled in films you can put on the TV on a Friday night, order a pizza, take your shoes off, put your arm around someone (if you’re lucky enough) and just be thoroughly entertained for two hours.
Movies like Hollywood should do them, the ones that fade out the unicorn tri-star logo before they begin. We’re talking Road House, Ghost, Dirty Dancing, and, memorably, Point Break.
You don’t need us to tell you what a fun film Point Break is. It is absolutely packed full of action movie cliches, but in a good way. It’s a strange mix of heists, surfing and the FBI that has no right to work, but thanks to the skill of director Kathryn Bigelow and the two leading men, Keanu Reeves and Swayze himself, it definitely does.
The movie was also lent authenticity by the casting of real-life surfing legends, including Laird Hamilton, for the scenes involving giant waves, which were shot on location in Hawaii. It was a big box office success, grossing four times its budget at cinemas, and netted an MTV ‘Most Desirable Male’ award the following year for Reeves.
Swayze is fantastic as the ex-president’s gang leader, Bodhi, doing many of his own stunts, including skydiving and going undercover at real surfing events to make sure he nailed the character.
As mentioned in his autobiography, The Time of My Life: “Bodhi was a once-in-a-blue-moon character, the bad guy whom you love because you believe what he believes in, until he believes it too far and breaks the law and kills someone. I loved Bodhi because I identified with his quest for perfection and the ultimate adrenaline high.”
But it could have been so different, not just for us action movie fans but for Keanu Reeves, who turned his success in the movie, in addition to his Bill and Ted films, into global superstardom, paving the way for The Matrix, one of the best sci-fi movies in history. As Swayze added: “When I was first approached about Point Break years earlier, they asked me to play Johnny Utah, the FBI agent-turned-surfer [played by Reeves]. But Bodhi was the only role for me. He’s a complex character who can read people instantaneously and knows exactly how to play them. I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into that role.”
Thankfully, Swayze did exactly that, conjuring up countless bromances in the future, not least in Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s Hot Fuzz partnership, who base a lot of their interactions on the 1991 classic (“Have you ever fired a gun in the air and said, ‘Ahhhh!?'”)
Point Break got an entirely needless remake in 2015, but the original stands up just as well as it did back in the early 1990s. Bigelow’s direction also had a big impact on other future directors, including Christopher Nolan and James Gunn, who have both outlined how the movie’s action sequences were influential for them.
Swayze, of course, sadly passed away 16 years ago this week, but left behind a fantastic catalogue of movies that will continue to be watched for all time, with Point Break certainly being one of them.
