Currently starring in 47 Ronin, the megabudget fantastical take on Japanese legend, Keanu Reeves is an actor who could potentially agree to be in just about any kind of movie, though he appears to always follow his personal tastes over doing anything strictly for a payday. One paycheck he is flat-out refusing is for Warner Bros. and Alcom Entertainment’s implausibly stupid remake of Kathryn Bigelow’s surfing/skydiving crime drama Point Break. I guess we don’t really know yet how stupid it will be, but if Reeves is staying away, we’re treating him as if he is The One and following him away from it.
When asked by the BBC if he would be interested in getting involved with the remake, Reeves was adamant in his response: "Absolutely not. It’s not my place." I can only imagine he gave the interviewer a stern duck-face as if he smelled his own shit beneath his fingernails. He said the project "sounds very exciting – but is it a good thing? I don’t know."
But the actor is such a nice guy, he did offer some form of non-damning encouragement. "If they can find a way to do it that works out good," he said, "then God bless them." So now Warner has both Reeves’ and God’s blessing behind them. The film can’t possibly fail, right? He went on to say that some films, such as The Wizard of Oz and Apocalypse Now, should all be tagged with a "no remake clause." I’ll second that, for sure.
We’re still trying to get over the fact that the film found a director in the first place. Ericson Core (Invincible) recently signed on to direct from a script written by Kurt Wimmer, who last wrote the terribly underwhelming Total Recall remake. The idea behind the remake is shoeing in a shitload of other extreme sports to complement the surfing and jumping out of planes. I suppose there will also be an undercover cop and a bunch of bank robberies, but the presidents’ masks are optional. It would be pretty interesting to see Bill Clinton and George W. Bush get some play for this though.
I’m not sure about everyone else here at Cinema Blend, but I’m much more interested in a potential reteaming of Reeves with Alex Winter for the oft-rumored Bill and Ted sequel, which admittedly comes with its own share of problems. But as the actor told the BBC, "It’s still in the dream. There’s a script and we’re trying to make it. So we’ll see." Maybe they can go back in time and totally scrap the Point Break idea before anyone has it. Is Socrates busy, do you think?
Below, you’ll find the classic skydiving scene in its entirety, featuring Patrick Swayze, who has always been the most bizarrely convincing aspect of this movie. Are you guys happy that Reeves won’t be coming back? Sound off in the comments as you’re leaping out of a perfectly good airplane.
