Often considered one of the best action movies of all time, Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break helped usher in a new chapter of Keanu Reeves’ career, one that set the actor up to become one of the greatest Hollywood stars of his time. With outstanding bank robbery scenes, some incredible surfing and skydiving, and a tremendous turn by the late Patrick Swayze, there are plenty of reasons why the movie is still so beloved 30 years after its release.
In honor of our partnership with Plex, where Point Break is streaming for free, we’ve put together a list of ten behind-the-scenes facts you might not know about the 1991 action thriller. With information on the movie’s conception, how its ending came to be, and so much more, there’s a lot to unpack here…
Rick King Came Up With The Premise Of Point Break While Taking Surfing Lessons
Years before Point Break opened on the big screen, it started out as an idea by writer Rick King, who came up with the basic premise in the most appropriate way: during surf lessons. When speaking with Hidden-Films in 2013, King revealed that he was sitting on the beach in Malibu when several of the movie’s key elements came to him at once. Before he knew it, King was thinking about bank robberies, an athletic FBI agent going undercover, and “Surfers who rob banks,” which would become key to the final movie.
Essentially, King thought of the premise as “Tom Cruise joins the FBI.”
Ridley Scott Attempted To Get The Project Off The Ground Years Before Kathryn Bigelow Took It Over
Later in the same interview with Hidden-Films, Rick King opened up about how Point Break languished as an unrealized project for a number of years before Ridley Scott stepped in and tried to make it happen. But after an undisclosed amount of time developing the project in pre-production, the Blade Runner director ended up stepping away from the project, which opened the door for eventual director Kathryn Bigelow to take things over.
Scott would end up having a big 1991 movie of his own, with the now iconic Thelma & Louise starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis.
Kathryn Bigelow Had To Fight For Keanu Reeves To Be Cast In The Lead Role
Keanu Reeves has since gone on to become one of the greatest action stars of all time thanks to appearances in Speed,The Matrix, and most recently, the John Wick movies. But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, as James Cameron once told Premiere magazine (via BirthMoviesDeath), Kathryn Bigelow had to fight for Reeves to be cast as Johnny Utah in Point Break:
[Kathryn Bigelow] went to the mat for Keanu Reeves. We had this meeting where the Fox executives were going, ‘Keanu Reeves in an action film? Based on what? Bill & Ted?’ They were being so insulting. But she insisted he could be an action star. This was long before Speed or The Matrix. I didn’t see it either, frankly. I supported her in the meeting, but when we walked out, I was going, ‘Based on what?’ But she worked on his wardrobe, she showed him how to walk, she made him work out. She was his Olympic coach. He should send her a bottle of champagne every year, to thank her.
Though Reeves would ultimately blossom into an all-time great before the decade was finished, it’s easy to see where Fox executives were coming from, as he had mostly been in comedies and dramas at the time.
James Cameron Made A Key Change To Way The Bank Robbers Looked
There are few scenes in Point Break, or any early '90s action movie, more iconic than the "Ex-Presidents" storming in and robbing a bank while dressed up in suits and masks depicting Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Lyndon B. Johnson. And if it wasn't for James Cameron's retooling of the script, those sequences could have looked a lot different.
During a 2021 appearance on the Script Apart podcast, screenwriter W. Peter Iliff revealed that he originally intended for the thieves to be wearing masks of the presidents on the various forms of U.S. currency. However, Cameron thought having Bodhi and his gang wear George Washington and Abe Lincoln masks wouldn’t be as cool as Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, whose presidencies were more recent.
Michael Biehn Was Considered For The Role Of Bodhi
It is hard to imagine anyone but Patrick Swayze playing Bodhi in Point Break, but another actor, one with a lot of experience with James Cameron (Kathryn Bigelow’s then-husband), was also considered for the movie’s surfer-turned-robber character. When speaking with Den of Geek in 2011, Michael Biehn, who famously appeared in The Terminator, Aliens, and The Abyss, revealed that “there was a call that was made” to him about the role that ultimately went to Swayze.
Patrick Swayze’s Love Of Jumping Out Of Airplanes Earned Him A Cease And Desist By The Production Team
Point Break features some of the most ridiculous sky-diving scenes of all time, and so it’s not that hard to believe that Patrick Swayze spent a lot of time preparing for the multiple jumps. But as Keanu Reeves revealed to E! News when talking about his co-star following Swayze’s September 2009 death, the Ghost actor liked it a little too much for the production team:
I think he had over 30 jumps during the course of filming and so the production served him with a cease and desist, which he listened to until they got to Hawaii.
As Reeves put it, Swayze was “jumping out of airplanes all the time,” before the powers that be stepped in to put an end to it. The action star also described the late actor as a “beautiful person, an artist.”
Gary Busey Has Talked About Keanu Reeves’ Interest In Learning On Set
Gary Busey, who plays FBI Agent Angelo Pappas in Point Break, has said that Keanu Reeves, much like his Johnny Utah character, was eager and willing to learn anything he had to do in order to put on the best performance. In fact, when speaking with The Hollywood Reporter years after the movie’s release, Busey had great things to say about his co-star:
The standout memory I have from working with Keanu Reeves on Point Break is -- 21 years old, rode a cheap motorcycle to work every day, and he was there to learn and grab. He was like a sponge, taking information from all the other players, the director, the crew, everyone. Very active, very conscious, and very vulnerable. He was like my little brother and I had my invisible arm around him whenever he needed me, and that's pretty much constantly. No, I'm kidding.
Though Busey was only joking about the whole “invisible arm” situation, it’s easy to tell that he still thinks a great deal about Reeves.
The Core Cast Had To Undergo Months Of Surf Training, Which Was Described As A ‘Big Surf Party’
With Point Break being about a group of bank robbers who pull off daring heists to fund their surfing adventures, it would only make sense for the actors playing those characters to know their way around a surfboard. Following the film’s release, Dennis Jarvis, the self-proclaimed “surf doctor of Hollywood,” told EW about how he taught Patrick Swayze, Keanu Reeves, and Lori Petty to pull of their characters:
It was like a big surf party every day. The cast would report to my house in Hermosa Beach at the crack of dawn to try to absorb the soulful life-style of a surfer.
And it paid off, as Reeves commissioned a custom-made surfboard after the lessons so that he could continue to surf after the wrap of production.
Future UCLA Head Coach Rick Neuheisel Taught Reeves How To Throw A Football And Even Directed An Iconic Scene
Long before Top Gun: Maverick gave the world an incredible beach football scene, Point Break showed the world how it was done. And the reason the nighttime scrimmage looks so good? Well, that’s because it was directed by future UCLA head coach Rick Neuheisel, who was also tasked with teaching Keanu Reeves how to throw a football prior to the shoot.
During a December 2022 appearance on SiriusXM ESPNU Radio, Neuheisel recalled a conversation he had with late college football coach Mike Leach about Point Break, a chat in which he revealed that Patrick Swayze was begging for an interception, and Gary Busey wanting to be in the scene.
The Point Break Ending Had To Be Reshot And Retooled Months After Production Wrapped
Unlike most of the movie, the Point Break ending isn’t all that action-packed, and it was originally going to be even more toned-down than the finished product. When appearing on the Script Apart podcast (the one mentioned earlier), screenwriter W. Peter Iliff revealed that the whole beach brawl between Johnny Utah and Bodhi was added after the fact:
They shot [the ending] and Larry Gordon, it was his first film at his new company Largo and said, ‘I need a fight,’ and we’re like well, it’s this thing with honor. Why are they going to fight? ‘No, you’ve got to have a fight.’ I think Kathryn [Bigelow] reshot that scene months later and it was a fabulous fight. I fricking dig the fight. I didn’t think they could pull it off that well and still get to the point of honor in the suicide wave.
And one thing that gives the scene away and shows that it was filmed later is Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze’s hair, as Iliff pointed out:
The coolest thing was that Keanu had gone off to Bill and Ted’s [Bogus Journey] so he had grown his hair long. Swayze had gone off to do City of Joy, a Roland Joffe film where he played a doctor and cut his hair short. So they come back, they’ve now flipped hairstyles. It’s a wonderful movie accident.
This “wonderful movie accident” ended up saying a lot about the transformations the characters went through after their encounter in the desert, which is really cool.
Hopefully these behind-the-scenes facts from the making of Point Break make you want to revisit the iconic 1991 action movie. If you want to check it out for the first time in years, or the first time entirely, you can do so as Point Break is streaming for free on Plex.
