52 Films By Women: Point Break (1991)

Twentieth Century Fox

By Andrea Thompson

For all the bluster and male machismo on display in Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 cult masterpiece “Point Break,” there’s a subtlety to it. Yes, behind the abs, the beaches, the surfing, the action sequences that include pit bulls being thrown around, airplane jumps, and robberies...there are some deep undercurrents.

The movie actually spent quite a few years in development, with various directors, casts, and titles attached and discarded by the time Bigelow came into the picture while she was still married to James Cameron, who is one of the producers. Both of them also apparently did quite a bit of rewriting on the script, even if they never received credit for it, and the result was a film that contains some of the best characters and action cinema has ever seen.

This rebirth of sorts accounts for much of the movie’s tone, which could be called outright ridiculous at times, even if it’s always enjoyable. “Point Break” is for all intents and purposes an 80s movie, and it has nearly all the staples of the decade’s cop dramas. There’s the loose cannon cop, the boss who takes every chance to eviscerate him, the ridiculous plot that includes surfers who rob banks to fund their totally awesome lifestyles, blustery banter, and its apparent embrace of all things machismo. Even our lead rookie cop Johnny Utah (oh, what a name), played by Keanu Reeves, is a former Rose Bowl-winning football quarterback.

Dig a little deeper though, and there’s much of the more progressive vibes that would come to define the 90s. Take the love interest, Tyler (Lori Petty). A name like that practically screams androgynous, and sure enough, Tyler is no unflappable blonde beach goddess in a bikini framed in a holo of light as she soaks up the California sun. When Utah first meets her, she’s dressed in a wetsuit, barely even framed as she scrambles in the chaos of the ocean to save Johnny from drowning after his disastrous attempt to learn how to surf. When he tells her his name, she shouts back, “Who cares!”

With her brunette pixie haircut and deeply 90s wardrobe, Tyler is feminine but not objectified. Her and Utah’s relationship, which eventually does become romantic, is far more equal than in most action movies. Tyler is the one who teaches Utah to surf, and her presence and framing itself is a commentary on the sexism of the genre. Bigelow literally films Tyler and Utah on the same level, rather than lingering lasciviously on Petty’s body, and Tyler constantly pushes back against the toxicity she encounters. When she is eventually, inevitably held hostage, that is when her wardrobe becomes far more traditionally feminine, with Bigelow dressing Tyler in a short white nightie.

Tyler is also the one to warn Utah about Bodhi (Patrick Swayze, RIP) one of the most iconically charismatic villains the movies have ever produced. From the start, Bodhi and Utah’s relationship has a deep undercurrent of homoeroticsm, with the kind of intense, love at first sight moments that’s typically framed as romantic, as Utah admires Bodhi’s surfing prowess as he is indeed framed and surrounded by the sunlit waves.

The late Swayze threw everything into this role, and it shows. He is entirely believable as a leader of a group of surfers so completely under his sway that they remain true believers even as they’re bleeding to death, a result of Bodhi chasing greater and greater highs.

Twentieth Century Fox

That is indeed what makes this, or rather his, group unique. They aren’t exactly robbing banks for the money, which they use to fund their surfing adventures. They justify it by a kind of spiritual philosophy, which Bodhi neatly sums up when he tells them, “We are here to show those guys that are inching their way on the freeways in their metal coffins that the human spirit is still alive.” It’s a grand statement, but then, junkies are pretty good at rationalizing their behavior. These guys risk their lives surfing the biggest waves, and their crime spree is little more than an extension of that same sickness. 

As Tyler points out in one of her many warnings to Utah, Bodhi can sense that Utah shares his sickness, and it’s no accident that Bodhi’s true toxicity is revealed via Tyler. He may wax sad about how he despises violence, but he sets up Tyler’s kidnapping so perfectly, Utah has no choice but to go with Bodhi’s demands and help him rob a bank. Bodhi may grieve when things go horribly wrong and the bodies start piling up, but he refuses to stop, even as he loses the rest of his team.

As Utah is pulled into circumstances that take him closer to, and eventually beyond the edge and he suffers his own losses, he in a sense becomes Bodhi’s final victim. He remains under his sway, even after he manages to track Bodhi down, overpower him, and subdue him. Ultimately, Utah can’t bear to see his wild man in a cage, and releases him so Bodhi can die doing what he loves: surfing the once-in-a-lifetime wave that will kill him, while Utah walks away and tosses his badge in the ocean.

Bigelow makes all this fun, tragic, and yes, deeply sexy without lingering too much on the bodies of the various surfers, male or female. It takes a hell of a director to get us to feel so much of the rush her characters feel, whether in the ocean, on a robbery, an iconic foot chase, or free falling through the air. You’d think it would’ve led to far more action films directed by women, but alas, change comes slow...until it doesn’t.

52 Films By Women: Near Dark (1987)

IMDB

By Andrea Thompson

“Near Dark” is a creative kind of genre fusion that absolutely works, but also tends to be unprofitable if it's not released at the right time. Even if 1987 looked like the right year for Kathryn Bigelow's now cult film, it just wasn't familiar enough for audiences to get behind at the time, resulting in a very familiar situation: positive reviews, but not much returns at the box office.

The neo-western “Near Dark” was part of a number of serious vampire films in the 1980s. “The Lost Boys,” “Fright Night,” “Once Bitten,” “Vampire Hunter D,” and “The Hunger” are all just a small sampling of the large proliferation of films that revolved around the undead. And while the smash hit “Interview with the Vampire” wouldn't be made until 1994, the book it was based on had hit shelves in 1976, followed by “The Vampire Lestat” in 1985 and “The Queen of the Damned” in 1988 to a very appreciative audience.

“Near Dark” flips many of the genre staples from the start. The first and most obvious is it is not a young woman who is victimized by a vampire's bite, but a young man. Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) is the quintessential good ol' small town boy. Hell, he even lives on a farm with his father Loy (Tim Thomerson) and sister Sarah (Marcie Leeds). One night, he meets a beautiful drifter named Mae (Jenny Wright) and gets bitten by her. He heads back home, but begins burning up in the sun. Just before he returns to the farm where he lives, the vampires Mae runs with pull up in an RV and kidnap him. During the rest of the film, Caleb is engaged in a battle for his soul. His nature now requires that he kill people to survive. “The night has its price,” Mae tells him soberly.

IMDB

Once Caleb resigns himself to staying with his kidnappers for survival purposes, the movie gets into territory that was probably too uncomfortable for audiences. Colton's struggle to live without killing is constant, and there's genuine suspense as to whether he'll kill or not. Even when he refuses, with Mae giving him blood from her wrist in lieu of killing, there's no guarantee he'll stay on a non-lethal path, not just due to his thirst for blood, but the other vampires, who insist that he kill to prove himself.

It's not just Caleb's struggle, which is all too recognizable, that probably made audiences uncomfortable. It's the vampires themselves, which also include Bill Paxton as the most psychotic of them, and Joshua John Miller as Homer, a vampire child who is actually decades old. They quickly become the other protagonists of the story along with Caleb, and they're mostly unrepentant monsters, killing the evil and the innocent alike, and bear more resemblance to the truckers in “Alien” (directed by James Cameron, whom Bigelow was married to from 1989 to 1991) than our most iconic bloodsuckers. These are blue collar vampires, with no aristocratic bearing whatsoever. For the most part, they became vampires by accident rather than being carefully chosen by a darkly handsome psychopath.

Nor are they particularly smart. Their leader, Jesse (Lance Henriksen), is charismatic, but it's hard to imagine these idiots surviving in a non-digital age, and it's also chilling to see just how easy it was for people to disappear before that age hit. This is a group of vampires who just decide to walk into a bar and kill everyone there in the most sadistic ways possible, and are nearly killed – by the police of all things. These guys may have superhuman abilities, but humans still pose a major threat since they're unable to get far enough away from the crime scene before daylight. Humans also manage to put up a credible threat later in the film's final battle.

Over thirty years later, “Near Dark” is still one of the best vampire or horror movies ever made, even if the word vampire is never uttered. Bigelow herself went on to make other films that became even bigger pop culture staples. “Near Dark” isn't just a melding of genres, it combines many of the topics Bigelow became famous for: machismo and women who are making their own lonely way in a male world. Films like “Point Break” and “The Hurt Locker” are examples of the former, while “Zero Dark Thirty” is the latter. Mae bonds with Caleb because of the loneliness and isolation inherent in her life. While she is equal to the men in her lethal family, they are clearly the ones who rule. The film was also a subversive look at the politics of the Reagan Era, which villainized the poor to make the public more comfortable with the continuing erosion of their safety net.

In their own way, the vampires of “Near Dark” are a kind of found family that embrace the very values Reagan was espousing with their loyalty and devotion to each other. But in spite of their strength, they face a constant struggle for survival, and are constantly dependent on others for it. They're essentially a struggling white working class family who mostly gets away inflicting pain and death, mainly because people who being taught that other groups were responsible for such vicious crimes. It feels even more relevant now in our current age, which makes the happy ending even more of a relief. It may be a bit too unrealistic even for a vampire movie, but with hope in ever shorter supply, the possibility of a new, better day after such horror feels like a much needed ray of hope that doesn't burn, but heals.