2015 film by Ericson Core
Point Break is a 2015 action-thriller film directed and shot by Ericson Core and written by Kurt Wimmer. He co-produced it with John Baldecchi, Broderick Johnson, Andrew A. Kosove, Christopher Taylor and David Valdes.
An American-German-Chinese co-production, the film is a remake of the 1991 film of the same name.
The film stars Édgar Ramírez, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Delroy Lindo and Ray Winstone, and was released in China on December 4, 2015, by China Film Group Corporation and in the United States on December 25, 2015, by Warner Bros. Pictures in 3D and RealD 3D. The film received negative reviews from critics who considered it inferior to the original, and grossed $133 million from a $105 million budget.
Plot.
Extreme sport athlete Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey), and his friend Jeff (Max Thieriot), are traversing a steep ridgeline on motorbikes. The run ends with a jump onto a lone stone column, where Jeff overshoots the landing and falls to his death.
Seven years later, Utah is an FBI agent candidate. He attends a briefing on a skyscraper heist in Mumbai, in which the criminals stole diamonds, escaping by parachute. A similar heist happens in Mexico where the criminals unload millions of dollars in bills, then disappear into the Cave of Swallows.
Utah's research concludes that they were done by the same men, who are attempting to complete the Ozaki 8, a list of eight extreme ordeals to honor the forces of nature. They have already completed three, and Utah predicts they'll attempt the fourth on a rare sea wave phenomenon in France. After presenting his analysis, Utah is sent undercover to France under a field agent named Pappas (Ray Winstone). They reach France and Utah gets help from others to surf the tall tube wave.
As he goes in, there is already another surfer riding the wave, leaving Utah unstable. Utah gets sucked into the wave and faints, but the other surfer bails and rescues Utah. He wakes aboard a yacht with the surfer, Bodhi (Édgar Ramírez), and his team Roach (Clemens Schick), Chowder (Tobias Santelmann), and Grommet (Matias Varela). They leave him to enjoy the party and he gets acquainted with a girl, Samsara (Teresa Palmer).
The next day, Utah finds the men in an abandoned Paris train station after he overhears them talking about the location. Bodhi gives him an initiation fight and soon he is accepted into the circle. They travel to the Alps for the next ordeal: wingsuit flying through "The Life of Wind" cliffs. The four succeed in their attempt and spend some time together with Samsara. The next day, they climb the snow peaks for the sixth ordeal, snowboarding down a steep mountain of snow. They reach their spot, but Utah decides to extend his line, so the others follow him. Chowder slips and falls to his death, and Utah becomes depressed about it.
After a party, Samsara explains that she and Bodhi both knew Ono Ozaki when they were young, that her parents died in an avalanche accident and Ozaki gave her a home after. She explains further that after Ozaki completed his third ordeal, despite what was widely believed that he died attempting the ordeal, he was actually killed by a whaling ship crashing into his boat while he was trying to save humpback whales. On his boat, Bodhi (a young boy at the time) decided not to tell the truth of his story but to finish what Ozaki started.
Next they travel to a gold mine where Bodhi detonates explosives Grommet and Roach planted. After blowing his cover, Utah chases Bodhi, managing to trip his bike. Bodhi escapes because Utah cannot stand up after the crash. The FBI freezes Bodhi's sponsors' assets; Bodhi plans to rob a nearby Italian bank on a mountain top. Utah and the police intercept the group, resulting in a crossfire that kills Roach. As the group flees, Utah chases and shoots one of them to death, who is revealed to be Samsara and not Bodhi.
Utah finds the location of the next ordeal: free solo climbing with no safety beside Angel Falls in Venezuela. He finds Bodhi and Grommet and chases them on the climb, but Grommet falters, falling to his death. Utah catches up to Bodhi, but he falls backward down the waterfall, completing what should have been the last ordeal. Bodhi, however, has to redo the fourth ordeal, because he bailed out on the wave when he chose to save Johnny. Seventeen months later, Utah finds him in the Pacific facing another giant wave. As Utah tries to get Bodhi to come back with him and pay for his crimes, he eventually lets Bodhi attempt to surf it, both knowing that he will not come back. The wave engulfs Bodhi, killing him. Utah begins going through his own ordeals, unclear whether he is still an FBI agent.
Production.
Development.
"Point Break" is an American-German-Chinese co-production. Studio Babelsberg co-produced and oversaw production services for the film. A script for the remake had been lying around for years, but it was not until Ericson Core pitched his idea to Warner Bros. that the film actually got off the ground. However, Core's idea for the film was significantly different than the script. His concept was much more of a big tentpole movie, with scenes that defy the laws of physics.
In 2011, it was announced that a remake of "Point Break" was being developed by Alcon Entertainment and Warner Bros. The screenplay was being written by Kurt Wimmer, screenwriter of the 2012 "Total Recall" remake. Wimmer co-produced with Broderick Johnson, Andrew Kosove, John Baldecchi, and Chris Taylor. Ericson Core, cinematographer of "The Fast and the Furious" (2001), directed. The film received funds of €3.6 million, from the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF).
Casting.
Luke Bracey portrayed the role previously played by Keanu Reeves. Ray Winstone took on the role played by Gary Busey in the original. Gerard Butler was initially in negotiations to play Bodhi, the role Patrick Swayze created, but negotiations fell through. By mid-May 2014, Édgar Ramírez was in talks to play Bodhi, and was later cast.
James LeGros and BoJesse Christopher, two of the actors who played Ex-Presidents in the 1991 film, were cast as FBI directors.
Filming and stunts.
Principal photography commenced on June 26, 2014, in Berlin. Shortly before production began in Berlin, Core got the cast and crew together to watch the original "Point Break". Shooting took place in a total of 11 countries across four continents, using actual extreme sports stars and stuntmen. Locations include Berlin/Germany, Hall in Tirol, Lienz and Carinthia/Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Hawaii, Tahiti, Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Venezuela, France, India, and the United Kingdom. While the original film focused on just a few sports – primarily surfing – and used cranes and other Hollywood trickery to portray them, the new movie eschewed all of that, including green screens, and relied on real life practical stunts. For the numerous stunts performed in the film, Core gathered a group of the best snowboarders, free rock climbers, big wave surfers, high-speed motocross riders and wingsuit pilots in the world and filmed them, essentially, as actors.
Surf sequence.
Since surfing was central to the first movie, the filmmakers wanted to include it again, but at a higher level. Core and his team looked all over the world to try to find out where waves were going to hit, and when, before finally settling on Teahupoʻo in Tahiti. However, shooting the scene proved to be challenging since enormous, surfable waves are rare and unpredictable. A set of crew first went to Jaws, a surf break in Maui, months before principal photography began on the film. The team had to wait several days in Teahupoʻo for the waves to swell. Luckily, enormous swells arrived. The crew ran nine cameras in the water, on cliffs and on helicopters to capture the action in January 2014. Laird Hamilton, a pioneering big-wave surfer, who also played a minor role in the film, contributed his skills to the shoot. Additionally, Ian Walsh, a surfer from Maui and Billy Kemper, Makua Rothman, Ahani Tsondru all served as stunt doubles.
Australian surfer Laurie Towner, who was hired as the stunt double for lead character Johnny Utah, broke his jaw and suffered other injuries during stunt surfing in Teahupoʻo for the film, in mid-September 2014.
Wingsuit sequence.
The wingsuit flying sequence which is notably the most dangerous stunt in the film was filmed in Walenstadt, Switzerland and required five stuntmen (including the cameraman) flying in formation, while all weaved through narrow mountain passes, one of which is called "The Crack", all at a speed of over . The production canceled planned flights on a number of days because of poor weather conditions, eventually completing it only after two weeks in August 2014. Core brought in Jeb Corliss, a professional sky diver, to help coordinate the scene and handpick wingsuit athletes to perform the stunt. Corliss and his team picked the best wingsuit pilots in the world, who have all made over 17,000 sky dives and have had 20 years of experience, including one thousand BASE jumps and thousands of wingsuit jumps each, to perform the jump. Corliss himself was going to be one of the fliers, but was not able to be, because he was recovering from a knee surgery after he tore his anterior cruciate ligament prior to the filming, while testing a suit. The five fliers includes two times World Wingsuit League champion and four times Guinness World Records holder Jhonathan Florez (cameraman, who died in July 2015), Red Bull Air Force former manager Jon DeVore (portrayed Utah), who previously worked on the wingsuit sequence for "", and served as the aerial coordinator, Mike Swanson (Bodhi), Julian Boulle (Grommet), Noah Bahnson (Roach), and James Boole. DeVore knew that the sequence was going to be difficult to enact, especially in supertight, choreographed formations. Corliss himself was familiar with the place since he made a jump in 2011 from a peak just outside the Swiss town. A video of the jump titled "Grinding the Crack" uploaded to YouTube has been watched over 30 million times. 
However, performing such a sequence proved to be very dangerous. If one person crashes with the other, it could lead to the disproportion of the flight pattern and subsequently could result in death. Due to this, safety became a top priority for Core. Prior to shooting, the stuntmen went to the location, and to other locations which were similar, to start training in groups. In order to get comfortable with the wingtip-to-wingtip flights necessary to pull the scene off, the wingsuiters initially jumped from planes, racking up more than 500 jumps over the course of the year leading up to filming. They would fly in tight formations over and over again, simply as a way of getting accustomed to the idea of having someone nearby at all times. The production team also went to Switzerland 12 days prior to shooting to practice. During the shoot, there were ground-based cameras with long lenses, and a helicopter with a gyro-stabilized camera as well. Since Core needed a series of shots to create the sequence, from point of view shots to profile shots of the wingsuiters cruising past the mountain to close-ups – unlike filming GoPro cameras – one of the wingsuiters needed to wear a cinema-quality camera on his head, rather than a GoPro. The task went to Florez and Boole, who had never done camera work before. The Red camera used in the flights weighed 15 pounds (6,8 kg), enough to significantly alter the way pilots normally flew. The wingsuiters made over 60 jumps in the course of two weeks to get all the shots. Corliss called it the most dangerous stunt that has ever been filmed for a movie.
Snowboarding sequence.
For the snowboarding scene, which was shot in the Italian side of Aiguille de la Grande Sassière in Aosta Valley, professional snowboarders Xavier de Le Rue and Jeremy Jones, along with Ralph Backstrom and Mike Basich, were hired to play stunt doubles. There were daily avalanche checks during the shoot, and a significant amount of time was spent sitting and waiting for the right conditions to film. For this scene, Core and members of his crew roped down cliffs to record the snowboarders from the best possible angles. At some point, Core had to give Xavier the camera and he