While the original Point Break - starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze – is best known for largely centering on the world of surfing, the upcoming remake due out later this year has some much bigger extreme sports plans in store. In addition to hanging 10, the characters in the updated story will also find themselves snowboarding, rock climbing, base jumping, skydiving and wingsuiting. And tonight we got an early look at exactly what the movie will be delivering.
After Paramount Pictures’ turn this morning, tonight The Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas belonged to the folks at Warner Bros., as the studio debuted some brand new footage from their upcoming slate during their presentation at the annual CinemaCon expo. Included during this event was the first ever footage from the brand new Point Break, which showed off some pretty extreme stunt work filmed in various corners of the world.
The footage shown during the presentation was largely cut in the fashion of a trailer, with little bits and pieces from scenes throughout the movie teased in quick montage format – though there were two sequences in particular that definitely stuck out from the rest of the pack. The first is what appears to be the heist that winds up getting Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez) and his gang on the radar of the FBI. Believe it or not, it’s actually a job that’s being pulled in the upper atmosphere, as the group is successfully able to board a plane midflight and steal literally a pallet of cash. While we didn’t see how they got on the vehicle, the footage did show off their exit strategy – which involved pushing the pallet out of the cargo door and skydiving to follow it down to a huge crevice/cave in the ground below.
While the heist scene was shown in bits and pieces in the sizzle reel, there was also one portion of the footage dedicated to spotlight one of the biggest stunts of the movie: Seemingly set shortly after Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey) has gone undercover and managed to infiltrate Bodhi’s tight-knit group, the sequence began with the gang wearing wingsuits while standing on the edge of a giant cliff. After a brief dialogue between Johnny and Bodhi, the entire group jumps, and the camera follows them as they soar through some absolutely stunning terrain – including an incredibly tight trench that everyone has to soar through. Without context it was hard to grasp how the moment will fit into the plot/drama of the rest of the film, but it was definitely beautiful to look at, and impressively all very real.
Shortly after the Warner Bros. presentation, I was also able to attend a press conference with director Ericson Core, stars Luke Bracey and Teresa Palmer, and coordinators/professional athletes Laird Hamilton, Jhonathan Florez, Jon Devore, and Jeb Corliss, and during this event I learned some rather cool things about the wingsuit sequence as well. The scene was actually shot on location in Walenstadt, Switzerland, and while the flyers in the film looked like they were merely gliding on the current, Devore (who actually flew in the sequence) revealed that they were actually going between 150 and 160 miles per hour. Florez also revealed that portions of the trench got as thin as seven meters wide – not a ton of space for a group of five to fly through. Core also revealed that the sequence took a full six weeks to shoot, with the stuntmen doing approximately 60 jumps each.
Given that Point Break isn’t scheduled to arrive in theaters until Christmas Day, it may be a few months before an official trailer is posted online for all of you to enjoy. Given how impressive the stunt work in the aforementioned sequences were, I won’t be surprised in the slightest when those same moments are highlighted in the debut preview as well.
