Point Break

Point Break should not work. An FBI agent goes undercover with surfer bank robbers, falls in love with the lifestyle, and has to choose between duty and freedom. On paper, it sounds absurd. In Kathryn Bigelow’s hands, it becomes the most exhilarating action film of 1991.

Bigelow understood that the appeal of action cinema is not the violence — it is the adrenaline. Every sequence in Point Break is designed to make you feel the rush: the foot chase through backyards, the skydiving scenes, the final surfing sequence in the Australian storm. Bigelow shot the skydiving scenes with real skydivers and real cameras, and the footage is still breathtaking 30 years later.

Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze have an electric dynamic. Bodhi is the most seductive villain in action cinema — you understand why Johnny Utah falls under his spell, because the audience falls under it too. Point Break is the film that proved Keanu Reeves could carry an action movie, setting the stage for Speed and eventually The Matrix.