A Tribute to Patrick Stewart

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

There are days you dread because you know they’ll happen some time in the distant future.  They’re inevitable, but they’re far off; they’re barely real.  Then there are those days you dread so much that even the stray thought of it popping into your head in an absentminded moment can be enough to ruin your day.  For me, this is one of those days.  This is going to be hard to write.

I know of Patrick Stewart’s work mostly through Star Trek: The Next Generation.  It was an ever-present show through my childhood, one of the ones I would come home from school and watch before homework and dinner, along with MacGyver and The A-Team.  It was a show that, ultimately, taught me a lot about the world and how I want to find my way through it.  Not what I wanted to do in life, which is certainly not space exploration or military service, but rather how I wanted to go through life.  And the thought and care with which I treat others as I have my brief cameos in their stories.

A lot of that is from Captain Jean-Luc Picard, of the USS Enterprise.  It’s probably the role he’s most famous for, so it’s not like I have to tell you about him, but I think I’m going to anyway.  You see, Kirk was a roll-up-your-sleeves and punch-your-way-out kind of captain, but Picard wasn’t.  Picard was a thinker.  Reserved, wise, thoughtful; but he was also kind and caring, decisive and authoritative.

In a group chat with old friends, one of them sent a tribute to Patrick Stewart.  The clip of him speaking to Data that’s been making the rounds about how you can make no mistakes and still lose.  The chat then filled up with messages from myself and everyone else about how Jean-Luc Picard played an important role in our lives, how he made competence and kindness look like the same thing, how The Next Generation was a show full of characters you could look up to and all those characters looked up to Picard.  And these were my friends’ words.  The group of us, all millennial men, reminisced about how this one character, played by this genuinely kind man, taught us what being a man was all about.  And it was never about who was the fastest to anger or loudest in a shouting match, never the strongest in a fight, never the most dug-in and close-minded.  It was about approaching people with curiosity and a willingness to learn and seeing things from their perspective.  Picard was Ted Lasso before Ted Lasso, he was Mr. Rogers in the vast and empty celestial black, he was Aragorn in a starship.  Strong, healthy masculinity that makes room for others rather than taking up all the space for himself.  Leadership isn’t about dominance, it never has been.  It reminds me of the idea of the alpha male, modeled off of wolf packs.  Scientist David Mech, who made the observation of a dominant male ruthlessly above the others in the pack was absolutely incorrect, based on faulty observations of wolves in captivity without their packs, and he spent decades trying to correct this misinterpretation of behavior.  In reality, the “alpha” of a wolf pack is more often than not simply a father wolf teaching his young how to be a wolf and do wolf stuff.  It’s not a position of dominance; it’s a position of nurturing.  The truth said second, however, is unfortunately far less effective than the mistruth said first.  So this myth of the alpha lives on even today in the form of manosphere influencers and general toxic masculinity, despite the book in which the term was coined was replaced by Dr. Mech with one that’s actually accurate.  The most alpha thing you can actually do is teach the ones younger and smaller and weaker than you, to help them grow and eventually surpass you.

And that’s who Jean Luc-Picard was.  I understand that I’m writing a eulogy for a man by talking about a character he played, but that’s how real Stewart made Picard.  When Patrick Stewart was cast as Professor Xavier in the original X-Men movies, I said “What’s Captain Picard going to do with the X-Men?”  The two are inseparable for me and maybe that’s a failing, but if there’s someone you’re going to admire this deeply based on a work of fiction, Captain Picard and Patrick Stewart may be the right pair to go all-in on.  Stewart grew up in an abusive household, with a father who survived the Battle of Dunkirk, but came home changed.  Like many veterans, the horrors of war stayed with Stewart’s father and society hadn’t progressed in a way that it was able to help him cope.  In the US, it was called shellshock.  In England, they called it combat fatigue.  Now, we call it PTSD.  And untreated, PTSD can result in all sorts of issues. I’m not an expert and I won’t pretend to be, but the long and short of it is that Stewart’s father took it out on him and on Stewart’s mother.  Physically and violently.  Domestic violence takes a toll on people far beyond the seen; the emotional scars of pain inflicted by someone meant to protect you are deep, numerous, and often invisible.  But Stewart was undaunted.  He pushed through, not just surviving, but finding theater and acting and going on to become one of the most respected actors in history.  He found his passion, worked tirelessly at it, and became one of the best and most influential to do it.

But that wasn’t all he did.  He spoke out against domestic violence.  He spoke about the toll it takes on its victims.  And he didn’t let hate cloud his feelings.  He supported the UK charity Refuge for abused women, like the mother he wanted to protect, but couldn’t.  But he also supported the organization Combat Stress, a charity that aims to help members of the British Armed Forces receive mental health treatment, including treatment for the PTSD that his father suffered from and was unable to receive treatment for.  He hated what happened to his father, he hated how it changed him, he hated what he did.  But it didn’t seem like he hated the man.  Even now, Patrick Stewart continues to teach me lessons.  I may never be as good a man as he was, but I can spend the time I have left trying to be.  Stewart even spoke out on behalf of pit bulls, dogs that are illegal in the UK since 1991 and can be seized and euthanized by the UK government.  I used to sit for a pit bull called Rocky and I very quickly realized that these sweet, misunderstood animals aren’t to blame for their reputation.  Imagine my surprise when this vicious animal came and sat on my foot when it rained because it scared him.  Not exactly the behavior of a natural born killer, is it?  Patrick Stewart didn’t just entertain, he spent his life in service of others.  For those who couldn’t speak for themselves.  Human and animal.  Even before he was Jean-Luc Picard, he embodied the lessons that he’d go on to model for a whole generation.  My generation.

Who you are matters.  It matters more than just how you’ll be remembered or whether you’ll be mourned.  It matters the lives you touch while you’re still here.  And Patrick Stewart touched millions of lives in a lasting and meaningful way that will never be forgotten.  I couldn’t point to one moment in The Next Generation that made me love Picard.  Because there are too many.  Maybe it was his defense of the android Data against Starfleet.  Maybe it was when he was stranded on a planet with an alien life form that only spoke in examples and he had to be open to finding a way that they could communicate with each other to survive.  Maybe it was that lesson he imparted to Data, that you can do everything right and still lose.  That it doesn’t take a mistake to mean you don’t win and that’s just life.  Maybe it’s one of hundreds more moments.  Or maybe it’s the totality of it.  Maybe it’s that at every turn, every time I put The Next Generation on after school, or secretly watched it at work in the time when Netflix could still get through network security, or again several times after that, he’s been a positive role model for everyone who was paying attention, of any gender.  But personally, in the light of all this manosphere, misogynistic garbage that so many men peddle for their own financial benefit to the detriment of women and the detriment of the young men who listen to them, I am so glad that I grew up with a man like Patrick Stewart and a captain like Jean-Luc Picard to look up to.  The reason I pay this much attention to media, the reason I analyze it, the reason I put so much stock into the messages, intended or otherwise, by media is because we are a bundle of our influences.  Our home life, school, friends, media, and now social media are all part of the mix.  And if we ingest garbage constantly, if we allow ourselves to be bombarded by messages that encourage us to hate, it won’t be long until deep down we become garbage too.  Men like Patrick Stewart show us what masculinity really means.  And the lessons he imparted are there for all of us to learn.

Ad Astra Per Aspera, Captain.  Rest well.  I will miss you for the rest of my time and your example will never be forgotten.

Croc and Awe

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

I just stumbled across a nature channel on YouTube called Casual Geographic, so I’ve been watching a lot of nature videos lately.  And as we’re now firmly in spooky season, I thought we could ease into it with a little creature feature that shows off just how terrifying nature can be (but in a funny way).  I’ll be honest, the state of the world has me on such an edge, it’s been a little more difficult for me to engage with media that intends to keep you on edge because I’m already there.  Sometimes adding Get Out to the mix doesn’t help things, even if it is a horror masterpiece (and if you haven’t seen that yet, go watch it after this).  So this year’s spooky season won’t be quite as spooky as usual, as I’ll be trying to explore more aspects of the umbrella of horror movies.  For now, stay out of the water (and off the surrounding shoreline); let’s get into the 1997 cult classic Lake Placid.  I don’t know if it actually is a cult classic, but if it’s not, it really should be.

Okay, so Lake Placid is hardly a documentary and it’s not exactly going to give you the same chills as Jaws or Jurassic Park did, and trust me, based on those videos I’ve been watching, nature doesn’t really need a helping hand to up the stakes.  There’s plenty scary stuff out there in nature and I’m talking more than just people who don’t clean up after their dogs.  Nature is plenty terrifying on its own, but nonetheless, we’ve got a movie about a giant crocodile that starts chomping up the local population around Black Lake, a lake colloquially known as Lake Placid up in Maine.  And for some reason, a paleontologist is needed.  There’s some talk about strange, almost dinosaur-like teeth being found in the victims, but coming just two years after Jurassic Park’s first sequel, it was probably just an excuse to get the word “paleontologist” into the trailer.  Don’t worry though, the absurdity is a feature, not a bug.

Sheriff Hank Keough doesn’t seem too pleased to see her, scoffing at her very presence.  Played by the legendary Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges, The Banshees of Inishiren, other movies that don’t have Colin Farrell in them), Sheriff Hank is happy to beef with anything that moves and Kelly is no different.  In fact, she gets resistance from just about everyone as soon as she arrives, but especially from Fish and Game officer President Bill Pullman (Independence Day, Spaceballs) aka Jack Wells.  It’s so very 90s rom-com coded, it’s almost like she’s been sent in by corporate to close down his bookshop before they fall in love over email (or whatever the plot of that movie was, I’ve never seen it).  Jack even makes a reference to Emily Post, the queen of etiquette, who is not someone you expect a Fish and Game officer in rural Maine to even know about, let alone talk about in casual conversation.  Hell, the only reason I know Emily Post is because I’m a huge nerd who doesn’t go outside and rather listens to etiquette podcasts (thank you Shmanners!).  Ironically, as intended, Kelly ends up being the fish out of water in the wilderness.  I’m the same way and when she proclaims that she thought camping meant a stay at the Ramada Inn and not tents on the banks of a muddy river, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more seen by a white girl in a movie.  Unexpected outcome of a Lake Placid rewatch.

News of the strange crocodile attack seems to have filtered out through pockets of the wildlife community, because eccentric, crocodile-loving Hector Cyr, played by Oliver Platt (The West Wing, The Bear) has caught wind of the rumors of the giant creature and he wants in.  I’m not sure if he’s expressly described as a billionaire, as back in 1999, a million dollars was still a lot of money and not just a down payment on a fixer-upper or 50 gallons of diesel, so being a millionaire was still culturally impressive.  If the movie were made today, Hector would probably be some tech billionaire, but here, he’s just a rich weirdo with a helicopter and an obsession with crocodiles, elevating them to earthly gods in his mind.  The helicopter is important too, that’s going to come up a lot.  He moves in with his money and his high tech gear and hijacks the investigation, adding a great deal of unprofessionalism and comedy to the proceedings.  And guess what?  Sheriff Hank doesn’t like him.  I’m telling you, the guy could have beef with a plain sheet of paper.

The gender dynamics are very 90s and there’s a surprising amount of body shaming between Hector and Sheriff Hank, but overall, most of what you see and hear is largely innocuous.  As I mentioned before, going back to older movies can often be a minefield when it comes to how they reflect cultural norms at the time (go back and watch Three Days of the Condor and tell me that the subplot with Faye Dunaway doesn’t make your skin crawl).  But compared to the average Shane Gillis appearance, Lake Placid is practically a feminist icon.  Okay, I wouldn’t go that far, but the point is, as dated as some of the dynamics are between characters, Shane Gillis still sucks and is not funny.

This movie is, though.  It’s probably too funny; if you’re looking for a proper scare, then Lake Placid isn’t for you.  And despite its lackluster critical reception, rocking a 47% on Rotten Tomatoes and an even worse audience score, there’s a movie in here.  What should give you tonal whiplash plays well as comic relief because of how talented this cast is.  Just taking Platt and Gleeson into account, you have two excellent, pedigreed actors to anchor the film’s script and then there’s Bill Pullman.  The Independence Day speech?  Come on, the man has screen presence and lots of chemistry with Bridget Fonda.  If Sheriff Hank can start a bitter feud with a white sheet of paper, by contrast, Bill Pullman can charm it.  And Bridget Fonda’s turn as Kelly is excellent as well; she’s consistently written and well acted, with Fonda’s performance lending a credibility to what is an objectively silly movie.  Punctuating this film’s few somber moments with physical comedy and then a scene of great violence just works somehow when you have actors that are this good.  Sure, most of the movie is them going into the water, bickering, and then an attack occurs.  Rinse (sometimes literally), repeat, get back into it.  It’s not original.  It’s not even all that spooky.  It just doesn’t matter that the movie doesn’t really accomplish what it sets out to do.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like this movie doesn’t have some thrills.  The crocodile is a massive monster and truly the thing of nightmares; but pretty much any crocodile is a prehistoric killing machine that haunts the collective unconscious.  So even though this one is supernaturally large, even smaller ones are pretty damn scary.  They are literally designed by evolution to glide through the water almost silently, which is fairly handy for an ambush predator.  And running in zigzags?  Whoever told you that is on Team Crocodile (or Team Alligator; I know there’s a difference, but if I ever see either in the wild, I’m not moving in for a closer look to confirm the taxonomy).  They will chase you straight down and they are generally faster than we are; start zigging and zagging and you’re going to get chomped.  But if you go into Lake Placid expecting a Jaws-like creature feature that makes you afraid to go into the water, that’s not this.

It occurred to me as I watched the movie this time, that even though it looks like a horror movie, what happens in the film and how it happens doesn’t really match what it says on the tin.  And I think that contributed to its low critical and audience reception.  I can’t argue it’s a masterpiece, but for me, Lake Placid sits in that 2 Fast 2 Furious category of campy, cheesy, bad movies that are actually really fun to watch.  And this one?  Well, you’re going to be best served by treating it as a rom-com, or a rom-com-croc-dram (that’s going to be difficult to say in the audio version of this).  Fish out of water paleontologist from the big city gets sent to rural Maine and finds herself a snarky and charming local Fish and Game officer with glorious hair and an easy smile and a few people get their heads bitten off in the background.  That’s just life.  If she were a single woman trying to figure out if she could have it all before ultimately deciding that what she really needed was a hunky man in a flannel who could do work around the house, it would be a Hallmark movie.  And that’s not a criticism of Lake Placid (though it is a criticism of Hallmark movies; don’t watch those).

Lake Placid may not be a proper horror movie, but it’s funny, fun, and frankly, way more family friendly than the R-rating would suggest.  And here’s where you find out I buried the lede a little: Betty White is in this.  It’s a small role, but Rose from Golden Girls packs a huge comedic punch in her few scenes and maybe says the most vulgar thing in the movie that I can remember and it’s still plenty tame.  IMDB insists there are several uses of the F word, but I can’t remember a single instance (which may say more about me than I’d like to admit), instances of blasphemy (which makes me wonder who’s writing IMDB’s Parents’ Guide), and a “severe” amount of violence and gore.  I have to imagine this is with 1999 sensibilities, because the period-CGI is hardly realistic enough to make you retch and it’s way less gory than a commercial for The Walking Dead.  And there’s basically no sex or nudity in the film either, if that’s something that you’re concerned about.  As I’ve stated many times before, I’m not a parent, but if you have older kids who can handle a couple of CGI animal attacks, this one isn’t the worst film for a family movie night.  If you like a few thrills with your rom-com fun, there’s kind of something here for everyone.  It’s B-movie material, but it’s a great time.  Rated a (very soft) R, it comes in at a breezy 88 minutes and is available to stream on Netflix.  If you need a marginally spooky break from spooky season (and this time I mean the midterms and not Halloween), you could think of worse ways to spend near as makes no difference to an hour and a half.

(Regular)Girl, Interrupted

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

I know that if you were here for the last post, you’re expecting a back to school special.  Unfortunately, some things got in the way and resulted in a few weeks off.  But don’t worry, that’s still coming; kids are going to be in school for pretty much the whole year, I think we can kick the can on that for another week.  Because Supergirl recently hit HBO Max and I’ve got to talk about it again.  This isn’t a Lone Wolf and Stub, so there will be some minor spoilers for the early story and discussion of themes.  If you want to keep it completely spoiler-free, you can check that post out here.  In that post, I addressed the undeserved critical and social media backlash, so I won’t go into again because this movie is still great and misogyny is still stupid.  And those are all the column inches needed for that.  Let’s get into Supergirl.

Headcanon is that she’s rocking out to the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack

Kara Zor-El is chilling.  It’s her birthday week and what is a girl to do when she’s turning 23 and she’s lived through multiple armageddons, and everyone she knew and loved other than her cousin and dog is dead, other than party on some red sun planets so she can get drunk and forget her troubles for a little while?  Even if a little while turns out to be multiple days?  We’ve all been there, right?  Anyway, while Kara and Krypto are out having what at least on the surface looks like a good time (at the very least Krypto is enjoying himself; that dog doesn’t know how to be down in the dumps, it seems), trouble is brewing not far from her chosen watering hole.    

Not only is he a scary looking dude, he keeps a ton of extra ammo for his BB gun just stuck to his face

And that trouble comes in the form of Krem and his brigands, an interstellar gang of, well, brigands.  I’m talking scum of the Earth (well, any planet, really), absolute garbage monsters to whom life is worth nothing and young girls are breeding stock for their all-male “race”.  Krem is played by Matthias Schoenaerts (The Old Guard) and while he has more Starscream energy than Megatron, it’s immediately and violently clear that he is ruthless, feared, and a remorseless murderer.  Because when we meet him, he’s arrived at the home of a legendary swordsmith to take everything he’s made; and you better believe fair compensation isn’t a term in this man’s vocabulary.  Things go horribly wrong, as expected, and we’re left with a little girl surrounded by the dead bodies of her family.  That little girl is Ruthye, played by newcomer and actual child Eve Ridley, who does an excellent job at playing the traumatized orphan with justifiable bloodlust.  Of course, being a small child, she’s not the best equipped to go after a band of murderous girl trafficking scumbags on her own, so she does what I think anyone in her position would do.  She grabs her family sword, slings it across her back, and goes to the nearest bar to find a champion to take on her cause.  We’re talking standard operating procedure here, basic life stuff.  It’s not like she can pull up revenge4hire.com on her phone and order in an army of killers.  I don’t know how the internet works in space.  And who knows what number you have to dial to get the Green Lanterns on the phone?  You can never find a space cop when you need one.

Unfortunately, as you can imagine, this doesn’t go well.  This is a 13-year-old girl, not the ideal age to walk into an amoral den of intergalactic killers and drinkers and wave around a sword from a legendary swordsmith and offer it as a prize.  She’s immediately cast aside and her sword taken from her.  This leads Kara to get involved, fighting the man to reclaim Ruthye’s sword.  Fun complication for Kara, though.  The planet she’s on, Ruthye’s planet, has a red sun.

Now if you don’t know, Kryptonians get their superpowers from the yellow sun, like the one we have in our solar system.  Under a red sun, like the one they had on Krypton, they’re pretty much normal.  Although I do use that definition lightly, because even without her powers, Kara is still a force to be reckoned with.  She retrieves Ruthye’s sword, gives it back to her, and then, well, refuses to help further.  This is classic stuff, you know, straight out of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey.  Kara can’t grow unless she refuses the call to adventure, so she does.  Tells Ruthye to forget vengeance because it’s such a dark path.  But then Krem puts a ticking clock on Krypto’s life and Kara has to cross the first threshold or lose him.  Game on.

Kara (played expertly, of course, by the returning Milly Alcock) and Ruthye are surprisingly well suited for each other’s company.  One is a girl desperately seeking revenge for the horrific wrongs committed against her and her family, the other is a girl desperate to not let her past tragedies define her present and future.  Together though, this Lone Wolf and Cub dynamic goes anything but smoothly.  Much to my delight, however, it does go quite comedically, with Kara’s nonchalance leading to some pretty funny moments where the juxtaposition of Kara’s and Ruthye’s demeanors through this whole ordeal is played for comedy.  Ruthye is determined, but naive.  Kara is reckless and world-weary.  Together, they represent a very stoppable force that is held together mostly by sheer determination and will and they’re up against seriously strong and well-prepared enemies.  An interstellar child bride trafficking ring doesn’t happen by accident.  The amount of fear they instill in the people they terrorize doesn’t happen by accident.  This is a vicious group of child rapists and murderers they’re going up against and Kara will not only have to dig deep to find a way to defeat them, but also not let Ruthye lose her humanity in the process.  Revenge gets a bad rap in movies most of the time, but even in my most vengeful moments, even I don’t think it’s a good idea for a 13-year-old to go on a John Wick-style killing spree.  That seems like the kind of thing that would send most therapists spiraling into an early retirement.  There are so few tales of revenge that end with the person exacting it getting their happily ever after.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that James Gunn pretty much fixed the Kryptonian problem by nerfing our favorite yellow sun worshippers.  First we had Superman get dealt losing hand after losing hand and have to push beyond his limits to deal with it.  Supergirl makes good uses of red and yellow sunlight as a challenge mechanic to make Kara feel even more vulnerable at times.  But it’s further testament that powers aren’t what makes one super.  Certainly not what makes one a hero.  Superman is tough, I couldn’t take him in a fight, that’s for sure (but I’ve also been bested by a strong gust of wind, I’m not the yardstick here).  But he’s not a hero because he’s strong.  He has to choose that.  Kara has to choose it too.  And she has to go on her own journey to get there.  The choice isn’t default.  Look around the world; the capacity for those with great power to do evil on a global scale is pretty much boundless (or at least it feels that way when I watch the news).  You have to choose to be good.  And not being bad isn’t the same thing.  Not harming people isn’t the same as helping.  Especially if you have the power to help and do nothing.  Hard to look in the mirror and call yourself a good person when you have the capacity to help and do nothing instead.  It’s not easy to be good.  It’s not.  It’s a high bar.  Kara is just at the start now, learning what makes her the woman that she is and how to be a hero when the choice to not be one is so much easier.  But what we see in Supergirl is Kara learning not just importance of using her powers, but the importance of being and doing good.  And I’m very excited to see where her journey takes her next.

You don’t have to be nice, but you have to be good.  That’s this movie’s enduring message.  And it’s one I hope more people will be willing to receive.  There has been a lot of talk about the needle drop, but what matters more are the moments of quiet.  A bottled rage that all who wish to see justice in a world rife with injustices perpetrated against the most vulnerable people feel.  That Kara feels too.  And no, I didn’t particularly care for the song chosen or the moment the needle dropped, but it took nothing away from the movie and I understand why it was chosen.  But it just doesn’t matter.  There are moments that matter much more than liking the song chosen over a fight sequence.  Those are the moments; the silent screams, the quiet memories in a state of melancholy contemplation.  This is when Supergirl is at its most powerful.  Those are the moments that make this movie great.  Milly Alcock said that this movie isn’t about love.  I respectfully believe that she misspoke at the time.  This movie is not about romance, not even a little bit.  But I see love in almost every frame.  Love for family, love for the ones we lost, love for the people all over the galaxy screaming out for someone to help them.  There’s love everywhere you look in this film.  There’s just no Ross and Rachel.  Because why does there have to be?  That’s not what this story is about.

Superman makes me want to be a better person.  A better man.  Someone who uses whatever strength is still in my increasingly creaky bones to support and lift up and help those who need it.  Someone who cares not just about good, but right.  Supergirl reminds me that it’s okay if I’m not there yet as long as I’m working towards it.  That when my knees buckle and my back aches and I barely have the strength to physically or emotionally even stand for myself, let alone for others, that it’s okay.  I don’t have to be perfect.  I don’t have to always do the right thing.  I don’t always have to know what the right thing to do even is.  And neither does Kara.  Supergirl embraces the mess of humanity and shows us that making a fist is just one small part of being strong.  And I think that’s pretty groovy.

Yeah, I’m John Wicking everybody for this fluffy boy, but I draw the line at sharing a spoon

Wave, the Last Dance

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

The quintessential summer movie turns 35 this year

Nothing says summer fun like sun and sand.  Or so I’m told, because I’m not a beach person.  If there’s one thing Anakin was right about, it’s that sand sucks.  It is coarse and it does get everywhere.  If I’m at a beach, it’s going to be in October, when it’s a bit cold and the sand is more hard packed.  But people seem to love it; going to the shore, going into the ocean (which I don’t understand; Shark Week is an annual reminder to not go in there).  So let’s pack the car for one last summer beach trip and get into one of the most definitive summer films, Point Break.

I should preface this by saying that I’m going to be talking about the 1991 original Point Break starring Keanu Reeves (Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Toy Story 4) as the ridiculously named Johnny Utah and the late Patrick Swayze (Road House, Ghost) as surfer/criminal mastermind Bodhi.  Not the absolutely joyless and terribly written remake from 2015.  You probably didn’t see that one, but I have and I had originally planned to do a compare/contrast between the two, but even on the internet, the Point Break remake isn’t worth the column inches.  That’s not the case with the original though.

Johnny Utah was a star quarterback through high school and college, but on the eve of going pro, he suffered a career ending injury.  So, just like I did when I realized a career in professional sports was off the table (because I wasn’t good at any of them), he decided to go to law school.  Unlike me, however, Johnny joins the FBI, gets assigned to the Los Angeles field office, and is partnered up with grizzled veteran and FBI iconoclast Angelo Pappas.  Pappas, played by Gary Busey (Lethal Weapon, Sharknado 4), has a wild theory about a group of bank robbers known as the Ex-Presidents because they wear rubber Halloween masks of the likes of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.  They are fast, they are efficient, and they are, well, professional doesn’t seem to be the right word to describe them as the first bank robbery we see them commit ends with one of the robbers mooning the security camera, but the point is that they’re very good at this.  In and out in under 90 seconds, long before the police are able to respond, and no one has ever been shot in the commission a robbery.  They have excellent crowd control and they’re quick and light on their feet.  They only hit cash drawers and they only rob banks in the summer.  So Pappas has developed this theory that his clean cut FBI colleagues think is ridiculous, but Johnny is more open to it.  Pappas thinks the Ex-Presidents are surfers, robbing banks to fund their lifestyle during the height of the season.  Sounds wildly specific, doesn’t it?  But we’ve got a movie on now.

Lori Petty was one of my first crushes, there, I said it.

So Johnny buys a surfboard and heads to the beach to learn to surf.  And in the process of learning what I view as a nearly impossible feat (I have terrible balance), he nearly drowns, but is pulled to shore by Tyler, an experienced surfer and since it was the 90s, pretty much the only woman in the movie.  So you know she’s going to be the love interest because, well, the world wasn’t ready for longing glances between Gary Busey and John C. McGinley (Scrubs, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), who plays his straight-laced boss.  I’m not exaggerating, either.  I’m pretty sure the only other named character who is a woman has fewer lines than Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis; as much as I enjoy this movie, Point Break will not go down in history as a bastion of representation in film.  Unless your definition of diversity is having every kind of long haired white guy in it.

Tyler, played by the legendary Lori Petty, who starred in pivotal roles from my childhood in movies like A League of Their Own and Free Willy, as well as the cult classic Tank Girl, is eventually convinced to help him learn the basics of the board, leading us to an 80s and 90s movie staple, the training montage.  Love it; if you don’t have nostalgia for the old-fashioned training montage, this movie will get you on their side.  Watching Keanu Reeves try to pop up on a surfboard on the sand while experienced surfers walk by and laugh at him is a lovely way to go through a montage.  It’s comforting to see someone that good looking struggle at something.  Through all this, the undercover Brian finally meets Dominic Toretto, the big man in a group of street racers.  I’m sorry, I meant the undercover Johnny finally meets Bodhi, the big man in a group of surfers.  Bodhi is a very talented surfer who lives to get pitted and hit those sweet barrels (I used to work with a surfer, I hope I used these terms right) and is a bit of a guru to those around him.  He sets the tone for every beach that he sets foot on and after he comes Johnny’s rescue when he’s jumped by a particularly aggressive group of surfers, that cements their relationship.  Like when Brian saves Dom from a police raid and drinks Vince’s Corona.  In case it’s not obvious, Point Break most definitely feels like the blueprint for The Fast and the Furious (though not the sequels, which have gone literally out of this world), just replace the cars with surfboards and the streets with waves.

The more you get to know Bodhi, the more you realize that he’s not just some kindhearted surf bum with an early-90s white guy understanding of Eastern philosophy.  He’s dangerous.  Surfing is more than life to him, it’s how he wants to die, too.  This guy is operating on a completely different level from everyone else, but I’m not entirely sure if he’s ascended, obsessed, or just out of his mind.  He believes that some mythical 50 year storm is going to hit a beach in Australia next year and that will result in the biggest waves in recorded history.  The kind of wave you know when you paddle out towards that you’re either going to tame it, tame the power of the ocean itself, or wash up on shore days later with the rest of the detritus; mangled, and half eaten by fish.  People say things are “life and death” like they’re two distinct, dichotomous options, two opposing forces at odds with one another and mutually exclusive.  But for Bodhi, to say that surfing is life and death is to mean that they are one; interchangeable, fungible, molded together.  There is no difference, there’s only the surf.  Surfing to Bodhi is both life and death simultaneously.  No wonder he’s willing to put his life and the lives of his crew on the line every time they don their rubber masks to continue to fund their wave chasing lifestyle.  I know that seems like a spoiler there, but it’s not really, and not just because the movie is now 35 years old.  But rather because it’s not a mystery.  Point Break isn’t about Detective Johnny Utah finding clues and gathering the surfers in the parlor before revealing who did it.  It’s not a whodunnit.  It’s an action film through and through.

But that doesn’t mean it’s weightless.  It’s not as straightforward as the FBI are the good guys and the Ex-Presidents are the bad guys.  Remember, no one’s ever been hurt and all the money they take, as they remind their hostages, is federally insured.  A little bit of trauma, some property damage, an afternoon ruined, and then the federal government steps in to make everyone whole again.  Sure, it’s not exactly a good thing to be taking things by force that don’t belong to you, but in a way, Bodhi and his crew remind me of Dutch Van Der Linde’s gang from Red Dead Redemption.  Maybe they are just outlaws, no good folks who don’t care who they hurt to get what they want.  But maybe they’re just out of lockstep with society and trying to live a life as an outsider leads them down a path towards crime because the lives they want are so incongruous with how we say everyone is supposed to live.  Maybe they are the ones really living while we zip up and down our freeways to jobs we don’t like.  But this isn’t the crime block I did last year, nor is Point Break deep commentary on societal issues.  This is summer fun and Point Break is the quintessential summer movie.  It has everything you want in a summer film.  The beach, the surf, the sun, wild parties, intense action sequences, even romance.  This movie has something for everyone.  Sure, the action isn’t exactly John Wick, but it was 1991; they had just banned smoking on international flights, it was a primitive time.

This movie is just fun and in some ways it’s even more fun now, precisely because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.  I only watched Point Break at the behest of my aforementioned surfer colleague, so I was well into adulthood when I saw it for the first time.  Nostalgia isn’t too much at play here; it’s just a good, honest action film.  It’s not going to light the world on fire and I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it’s a classic the way that Casablanca is or a future classic like 2 Fast 2 Furious, but this movie is 2 hours and 2 minutes of a good time that streams on Peacock.  It is, however, rated R for language and brief nudity, so maybe let the kids watch Hoppers again instead of watching this on family movie night.  It’s no shining bastion of quality writing, nor quality acting; though I’ll say that Swayze and Petty put in good performances, with Petty’s trademark raspy voice punctuating her tough-but-vulnerable character.  As the chips begin to fall and the bodies begin to pile up, the movie races to a breathless conclusion that is sure to excite even modern audiences.  And you get to see just how cold Bodhi can be when the facade of Buddhism falls away and all that’s left is violence and blood money.  I enjoy this movie a lot and really the only reason that I prefer The Fast and the Furious to this is because I like cars and I don’t really care about surfing.  In a way, Point Break is the B-movie version of Heat; the blueprint for movies to come, to iterate on, and sometimes improve upon.  And for that alone, it’s worth a watch.  But its historical significance to B-level action movies aside, it’s got a great summer vibe that is a great send-off to the season.  And with Grand Theft Auto VI on the horizon, this could also be a fitting mood setter for your next gaming session.  Point Break holds up better than most from its era, I think in large part thanks to the expert helm of Kathryn Bigelow, who would go on to direct cinematic masterpieces like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.  Sure, the representation in the film is nonexistent, but even the extras aren’t overly sexualized and neither is Lori Petty (nor Reeves and Swayze).  The macho banter is largely not homophobic, which is rare for a movie of this time.  And while there are many things that could be improved upon to the modern eye, nothing stands out as tremendously horrible.  It’s an old movie that doesn’t make you feel bad watching it, which is a plus.  Pop some corn, put your feet up, and enjoy.

Thank you all for sticking with me through this block of summer fun. It’s the first time I’ve done a themed set of posts for such a long period and trying to focus on fun was an interesting exercise for someone who believes the best comedy is born from a kernel of sadness.  For a quick roadmap of what’s to come, September brings us back to school, so you know I have to have a special, a counterpart to how we opened this summer with Bad Words.  After that, I’ll be gearing up for spooky season, as every October I subject myself to horror movies to find the depth beneath the terror.  And in the meantime, I’ll be recording audio version versions of older posts and putting them up on YouTube as well, so new readers and listeners will have the option of audio.  I’m also continuing to stream on Twitch, generally twice a week, and you can find me at twitch.tv/aslam_c.  I’ve been streaming a variety of games, from Marvel Rivals to cozy games, as well as some LEGO building.  If that’s something you’re interested in, I’d love to see you in chat.

No, I’ve never fired my gun in the air and gone “Arr”