Transcript

Angelo (Point Break)

It's time for lunch.

Utah (Point Break)

Angelo. It's 10:30.

Angelo (Point Break)

Right around that corner there is a sandwich shop. They sell meatball sandwiches. Best I've ever tasted. Would you go get me two? Come on, partner. Two. Thank you. Utah, get me two.

Steve

It's two Dads one Movie. It's the podcast where two mid dads sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the 80s and 90s. Here are your hosts, Steve Paulo and Nic Briana. Hello everybody. It's another episode of 2 Dads 1 Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

And today we're talking about the movie Point Break. And of course it's very important to mention this is a podcast about the movies of the 80s and 90s where talking about the good Point Break, the one from 1991, not that X Games remake from, I don't even know, 2015 or something like, screw that. No, no, no. This is, this is Keanu Reeves. This is Patrick Swayze. This is Katherine Bigelow. This is the original Point Break. Very excited.

Nic

Absolutely. We both love this one. In high school, college, like, you know, teens, twenties. This one hits. Checks all the boxes. So much cool guy activity. Cannot wait to talk about this one today.

Steve

Yes. And I know this is an audio medium, so it sort of doesn't matter, but I am actually wearing a shirt that says Utah, give me two.

Nic

I can verify that it's awesome and I am very jealous.

Steve

Yeah, it's, it's good stuff. And I get all kinds of fun comments from, from people, most of whom don't actually recognize the reference. But those who do, you know, it's a moment of realization between two middle aged dudes going like, yep, that guy likes cool movies. All right, so Nic, this was your pick. You picked Point Break for us. Why don't you give us just a little rundown of like your history with the movie and maybe why you picked it.

Nic

Yeah, I think this was a good word of mouth, teens, 20s kind of movie, VHS, DVD classic where someone would show up to your house, hey, we're gonna hang out, have a couple beers before we do whatever we're doing tonight. Let's pop in Point Break. And it just hit every time. There's a lot of real action. It looks really cool. The plot is interesting, it's well paced, but also there's just a lot of unintentional and intentional comedy in this one. I feel like there's a lot to keep you engaged and very quotable, like you said. Utah, get me to probably least relevant quote to the Plot, Right. For a quote that everyone would associate with a movie. Right.

Steve

Yeah. And. And you know, we'll just go ahead and I'll just jump in on this part real quick. I read recently that that was a Gary Busey improv that wasn't in the script. He just leaned out the window as. As Utah walked away to go get his meatball sandwiches and said, utah, give me two. Totally off the cuff. That's Gary Busey for you. Long before the brain completely rotted away.

Nic

We still have some abuse left.

Steve

A little tiny bit, but yeah. Okay, cool. So, yeah, for me, you know this. Yeah, this is a movie I probably saw originally in high school. I wouldn't have seen this one in the theater. We were, I don't like 11 when this came out.

Nic

A little too young.

Steve

A little too young for rated R. My parents were pretty strict on the rated R thing until I was about 15 maybe or so. So that's probably about when I saw it. I think I've seen the first hour of this movie like a dozen times and the whole movie like the second hour like two or three times for whatever reason. It's something where all the stuff that happened kind of up to and including the first parachute jump was very familiar.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And then after that it was kind of like I had not remembered a lot of it from that point on. So that was an interesting. An interesting watch through to sit down and just watch the whole thing through.

Nic

Yeah. And it's still good in the second half, but it is just, I don't know, you pop it on and you kind of. You zone out or you're just checking out the action and checking in from time to time rather than being fully locked into it.

Steve

Absolutely. All right, let's jump into just the facts on Point Break. So this movie was released on July 12, 1991. It was R rated, of course, totally well earned. Running time of 122 minutes. Directed by Catherine Bigelow, written by W. Peter Iliff. And I always appreciate people who have a first initial middle name thing going on. That's always a lot of fun.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Starring mostly Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. They got the above the title billing in the credits, but also Lori Petty playing a huge role here as well. Scores very, very respectable scores. 70% of Rotten Smith tomatoes. That's a nice clean certified fresh rating. And a 7.3 on IMDb means, yeah, this is a well liked movie. This is a movie people dig. Awards. It did win one award. It was nominated for a few MTV Movie awards at the 1992 MTV Movie Awards. Two of the nominations in the same category.

Nic

All right.

Steve

As both Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze were nominated for Most Desirable Male. And Keanu took away the trophy that night.

Nic

So it's like it's both our moon man. We just keep it at my house.

Steve

I. I want to try to hunt down the acceptance speech from that night. I don't know if anybody's got it, but it would be really fun. I'm sure Kean Reeves must have mentioned his co stars, you know, co nomination there. It was also nominated for best action sequence but lost. It was the second parachute jump when Utah has to catch bod midair. Was nominated for best action sequence but lost to the LA. The LA freeway action scene from Terminator 2, which. Yeah, that makes sense.

Nic

Dollar for dollar. I mean, if this. You'll get to in a second. The budget for this film, $24 million. Bad to be in the conversation with Terminator 2 at that time.

Steve

Must have been 100 something million, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It was a $24 million budget. It earned almost $84 million. The box office. That is a hit. That's a hit movie. Basically three and a half times what it cost. This was a hit. There's kind of no denying it. And, you know, it's not a surprise. Let's dive in, man. Let's jump into the movie. I just want to. Before we get into the plot, I just want to mention we saw a coup, watched the River Wild together and commented several times on the cinematography and sort of the beauty of it. Yeah, this is another movie that is just gorgeous.

Nic

It looks great.

Steve

It's. You know, we start off with this sort of dual. These sequences going back and forth between Johnny Utah apparently still at Quantico finishing his training or something, or. And then. And then our. Our surfer buddies. And the surfing cinematography is. Is really out of this world. It is fantastic. It looks amazing.

Nic

Yeah, it's not distracting at all. It doesn't look like it's just spliced in from another source. It flows in seamlessly for the movie. Yeah. So we have Bodhi kind of doing his big wave extreme surfing, whatever he's doing. And then we've got Johnny Utah just taking out wooden cutouts of bad guys which are just exploding. They must be like, look, can you use a smaller caliber? Like we have a lot of guys that need to train on these. We can't have you blowing. I got to paint that now. I got to paint a mean face on this fake bank robber again. But it was showing, you know, Johnny Utah's skill level.

Steve

Right.

Nic

How adept he is with the gun and just going through. And if you are a fake wooden cut out of a criminal, you cannot sleep soundly at night knowing that Johnny Utah is on the case.

Steve

Yeah, absolutely. This was also, it's kind of interesting, I was thinking when we're watching this that this was maybe a glimpse, you know, Reeves kind of borrowed from this moment when he, you know, really ideated around John Wick and all the absolute just terror that that man handles. Just a handgun. But ye. Yeah, it's, it was, it was very impressive. And, and we're told, of course, hey, perfect score, Johnny. Way to go.

Nic

Yeah, 100%.

Steve

100% Utah.

Nic

Good job.

Steve

But also, you know, just to, to something to remember, I guess as we go through the plot of the film and we'll come back to this like it is pouring rain. I mean it is, it is drenching him in rain. And yeah, I think interestingly, just what is the, you know, wooden cut out budget of the FBI? It must be very high.

Nic

It's. Yeah, it's off the charts, I think. And something that I want to do some research on because we've had a lot of movies deal with this issue. I feel like cinematic guns work so well when they're soaking wet and I don't know, can you just dip a gun fully in a lake and then pull it up and have it shoot?

Steve

I am admittedly not a firearms expert in any way, shape or form. I did earn a marksmanship badge in the Boy Scouts when I was about 13, you know, firing a very lightweight.22 rifle down range 100ft or something. So, you know, not exactly military experience.

Nic

So you weren't in a monsoon?

Steve

No, no.

Nic

With two Sig Sours blasting away.

Steve

Absolutely not very dry. Perfect. Optimum conditions. Beautiful camp. Camp Wolf Borrow in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Yeah. No, I don't know, man. It seems like it wouldn't work. I don't know. It, it does seem like it looks cool.

Nic

It, it really adds to the drama.

Steve

It, it does really add to it. It makes it very, very fun. Okay, cool. So we, we see Utah, he's doing his thing. We've got Bodhi introduced to us really briefly. Not even really the character yet, but we see the surfing. We know this is a movie that we're surfing is very much at the center. And very quickly we move to Johnny Utah showing up for his first day at work.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So yeah, like this is to talk to me about the scene, okay.

Nic

Being introduced by one of the great character actors, John C. McGinley. So good, you know, that we're, we're absolutely flush with quality John C. If he's like a secondary good John C. Right. Like John C. Reill is a little superior, but he, John C. McGinley is very good at being kind of the fast talking asshole co worker. He's been in Wall street office space, like a bunch of things where he's just perfect in this. And he's kind of running down to Utah like, you know, I don't know about where you're from, but we don't fuck around here. You know, we don't drink, we don't smoke, we don't, you know, do all this stuff. And Utah responds with I cut the skin off my chicken, sir.

Steve

Right. And then turns right around and grabs a donut off of whatever. I love these. I just clearly screwing with really good. And to his credit, McGinley's character picks up on it right away as well. But he does not like Utah. It's clear off the bat. Right. Also there's a couple references, I think, I think McKinley says it once. And then we're about to meet Angelo, Gary Busey's character as well, very early on here. And they both use a term that I had to look up. So I don't know if you're familiar with the SERM, but John C. McGinley calls Keanu Reeves character Johnny Utah a Blue Flame Special. And then Angelo, you know, Gary Busey calls him a Blue Flamer. And I was like, I thought maybe like, like I've heard Blue Light Special, but that's like something about.

Nic

No, I didn't hear. And I'm glad you brought that up because I didn't write it down, but I remember hearing it. What, what was, what did you find?

Steve

Yeah, so apparently it is literally about referring to a, a very inexperienced, even rookie law enforcement officer, especially one just put on special assignment. So I mean it's literally, it's like exactly what Utah is just a sort of a kind of cop talk that they clearly did enough research to put in into the film appropriately. But yeah, that's what a Blue Flame or a Blue Flame special or a Blue Flamer or whatever refers to of young inexperienced cop ready to take on this special assignment.

Nic

Yeah. And they seem like they have very little respect for him. Although Utah comes in very kind of. He's idealistic, but he seems very eager to do his best and contribute and, and bring everything he can to the Table. So it is kind of funny that they're just like, whatever. You haven't worked here for 15 years. You don't know how to properly, you know, make coffee in our broken coffee machine.

Steve

You. Yeah, it does seem like if the point here is to stop bank robbers. Right. This is specifically. He's been assigned to the bank robbery division in Los Angeles, which does seem like, that seems like a desirable assignment if you're an FBI agent. This does seem like, I'm not quite sure. We don't really get an idea. Other than his 100% shooting performance, why Utah maybe would get this assignment sort of straight out of Quantico, as they say. Right. Straight out of the academy, the FBI training facility. So. But here he is, you know, I mean, it's, he, it's, it's. He's ready to take on the bank robbers.

Nic

I want to ask you something about this because they mentioned it kind of in this movie and in other bank robber, bank robbery movies there'll be some kind of graphic at the beginning. You know, in the city of Los angeles, there are 700 bank robberies a year.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Where's the news on any of this shit? Why are we seeing the water skiing squirrel if there's 700 bank robberies a year? I feel like I'm never made aware of any bank robberies on the news.

Steve

Right. To be fair, that waterskiing squirrel was San Diego, not la. Just throwing that out there. But no, you make a good point. And I think you can't travel well. You know, I think there's a handful of things going on here. I think one is the suppression of the real news by the fake news media, the lamestream media, currently, you know, and you go back to the pandemic, just real all bad stuff. Now can, you know, I think that there is an element of like, you know, what do they say when you, when you talk about some of these crimes? Right. You know, it sort of glorifies it. It makes you inspire copycats. The nature of bank robbery as a crime is super interesting to me, always has been. Because the people whose money is being stolen are insured by the government via the fdic. So it is, it is not a victimless crime, don't get me wrong. Even if nobody gets hurt during the robbery. But it is a weird one where it's sort of like, yeah, who are you feeling bad for? I guess. Yeah.

Nic

It's kind of an abstract victim.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

To the crime, I guess it is a little different.

Steve

So, yeah. So I think that's One of the reasons. And then if they really are as common or were in the, you know, maybe late 80s, early 90s, as this movie leads us to believe, part of the reason you wouldn't hear much about them is that they'd be happening so often. That would be all would be on the recording. It's a sort of like, yeah, there was another bank, Robbie, in LA county today.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Six million people live in LA County. There's got to be other stuff to talk about. So. And then again, I don't know if it's still so rampant, like, if, you know, in today's day and age with modern technology, if bank robbery is still so common or if it's far more like, you know, what you definitely don't hear about nowadays is all the companies getting ransomed over, like cyberware, you know, cybersecurity attacks where they have to, like, pay bitcoin to some, you know, Bangladeshi gang. Like, that kind of stuff doesn't hit the news when it happens. Right. So it's probably. That's probably the modern version of not hearing about all these bank robberies. Yeah.

Nic

Well, and to be fair, I only get my bank robbery statistics from the text that shows up at the beginning of the Den of Thieves movies.

Steve

Ah.

Nic

So, you know, that might be a little bit out of date.

Steve

That's possible. I also want to comment. So really early on in the movie, I think. I think we get a shot of her before Utah shows up to the, to the, to the beach. But if not, it came to my mind because she's in the credits, but Lori Petty. What happened to Lori Petty? She's cute and she's. And she, and she's good in this movie. And she was fantastic in Tank Girl, and I literally can't think of any other thing she's done besides point breaking. Tank Girl.

Nic

Yeah, I don't know what happened to her. And I. I mean, Tank Girl was her thing. Oh, God. Yeah, that was so. That seemed like a launching point for somebody to have a career as a star of, you know, like a quirky. Right. But yeah, still very attractive. Can play a lot of different directions.

Steve

Yeah, she was never going to steal roles from, like, Julia Roberts, but she absolutely had, like, star quality. And I'm kind of surprised that the, the early 90s did not, you know, the early to mid-90s did not give us more Lori Petty.

Nic

Yeah. Maybe she learned how easy it is to rob banks. So. So Utah, he's kind of getting talked down by the. The veteran John C. McGinley, and he's being brought to meet his partner. And we're shown a scene where the agents training for the day is that they have to put on a blindfold and dive into a swimming pool and pull two bricks from the bottom of the pool and bring them up.

Steve

Right.

Nic

Which is. Is this happening a lot? Is there like a. Like the freighter boat that's leaving Fort Knox blows up, and then there's all these gold bars at the bottom of the ocean that.

Steve

I'm pretty sure Fort Knox is landlocked, so I don't think that's a. That's a specific. It's Kentucky. Right.

Nic

Well, in the prequel, they dig a canal from the sea all the way to Fort Knox.

Steve

Now, it does feel like summer camp. I'm not really sure why, what kind of activity this is supposed to be, but. But it's. It's an odd one.

Nic

And throwing those, like, little rings, like the weighted rings into the pool and stuff for your kids.

Steve

I would do that for both my kids as they learn to swim. Angelo, appropriately, I think, complains about it, like, I don't know what this has to do with stopping bank robbers. And I don't think he's wrong. I can't either.

Nic

And it was a great way to introduce this scene where. So he's being blindfolded as he's about to go dive for his bricks. And he thinks he's still talking to the other officer, but really it's his new partner, Johnny Utah, stand standing across from. And he mentions, like, I don't, you know, I want to be matched up with a real cop, basically, not some young puke quarterback punk. And then he introduces himself. Oh, sorry, I'm Angelo Pappas. He goes, punk. Quarterback punk. So Utah, he knows that these guys are trying to fuck with him. He's not green in any way. Like, he seems like he knows how to deal with people and he knows what to expect from these people in his new position.

Steve

Right. I have a feeling that the. The sort of camaraderie and the hazing that comes along with it in the FBI or in any law enforce organization, you know, male dominated, like certainly as it was back then, still is, but even more so in the early 90s, it's probably very similar to being in, like, a college football locker room where that kind of, like, mentality is super rampant and prevalent. And. And if you can't, you know, if you can't dish it as good as you take it, that you'll just find yourself kind of in trouble and not having a good Time. And that's probably. There's a little bit of Utah. I mean, you know, was Utah frat boy at Ohio State. He must have been. Right? There's no way he wasn't. He was the star quarterback.

Nic

Yeah, he does. I mean, yeah, you have to be. And it's Ohio State, so it's not like a school. Like certain times you go to a school and there's not a big fraternity scene because there's a lot of just other stuff going on. But if you're at one of those like college town type colleges, it's a. Probably almost required.

Steve

Absolutely. Yeah. So.

Nic

So. So Papas, this Angelo Pappas and. And Johnny Utah meet each other and then it's cutting right to the action of the antagonists, I guess in the movie who were chasing after. And this is the ex Presidents.

Steve

So cool.

Nic

Busting into a bank. And there's four of them in President Mass. We got Ronald Reagan, we got Carter, Lyndon Johnson and Tricky Dick Nixon. I would love to see where you can find a Lyndon Johnson nowadays. That's probably. That's a deep cut.

Steve

I mean, at that point, I feel like at that age, at that era, it would have been easier to find either Gerald ford or George H.W. bush. It would have to have been. But yeah, so they went with lbj. Interesting choice. A Kennedy mask wasn't available, I guess. Like, I'm not really sure why exactly it was Johnson, but it did seem a little odd. It was sort of like in some ways the way that Mount Rushmore has Teddy Roosevelt on it because he happened to be president when they made Mount Rushmore.

Nic

Oh, nice.

Steve

Now he. Partly also because of his work creating the national park system. Don't get me wrong, it's not. But you know, it's. It's Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, the second Roosevelt, the less popular Roosevelt. Same kind of thing. So we have Reagan, we have Nixon, we have Carter, who had just, you know, recently been in office before Reagan and then Lyndon B. Johnson. Okay, let's move on from that. But yeah, interesting choice.

Nic

But it's a great, great scene of just kind of showing their efficiency and like the way that there's a. Yeah, they're really a machine going in and doing these bank robberies. But then there's this like, playfulness to them, like that they, they almost know that we have this figured out. Like you're not going to catch us and we're not going to fuck up.

Steve

Right?

Nic

Because we're on top of it and we stay within our limits and we don't we don't push things too much. So it establishes them as very competent, very pro antagonists here.

Steve

Very professional. In and out in 90 seconds. Nobody gets hurt. They really control the room. They stay out of the vault, we're told. Right. Papas is telling you to all this about them. They're only going for the cash drawers, which obviously still has a ton of money. If you're going to every bank teller's cash drawer in a bank in the middle.

Nic

Especially in 91 versus today.

Steve

Yeah. Where everything was cash. Right. So, yeah. Plenty of money to take there. But it gets you in and out quickly. You don't waste time. Nobody has to get hurt. No, you don't. You don't need to wrestle with who's got the keys to what or blah, blah. You just go through. Right. So very smart and a very worthy opponent for our bank robber hunting FBI agents.

Nic

Yeah. And the FBI has no clue what's going on. And the FBI is kind of like, these guys are making us look stupid.

Steve

Right.

Nic

And Utah kind of picks up on the fact that the other agents are kind of giving Angela a hard time about what his theories might be about this group of bank robbers. And he's able to provoke him by kind of, you know, oh, you're washed up. You don't care about this anymore. But I care. And he gets a little fire out of Papas and gets him to tell him his theory about how they're surfers.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

And they go through some evidence that they have, you know, like, you know, this is the tan line. I like that. The one of the bank robbers moons.

Steve

Yes. The security cameras.

Nic

Cameras. And they can tell from the tan line at the. At the top of his butt.

Steve

Correct.

Nic

That a good, good job.

Steve

The thing is though, it is la. Probably a lot of people just go to the beach, you know, wear board shorts and go to the beach and would have a similar tan line. I do think it's funny that that. To get to that. To get Papas to that point, Utah suggests that they go handle the drop car with the car that the bank robbers used to get away. And Papa's piss off about this. He does not want to do that. That is crap work.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

But it gives them a chance to like talk more and stuff. And something I noticed real quick while they were at the drop car, Utah is looking around for clues and there is like a CSI guy sort of in the car with them. You know, he's like dusting for prints or looking for something, whatever. That actor is actually the Dude's landlord from the Big Lebowski who ends up doing that weird one, man.

Nic

Okay, that guy looked familiar. I was, was killing me who it was and I totally forgot to look him up. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

Steve

The character's name apparently was Halsey, although I don't think we actually hear his name at any point. That is who that was. That was.

Nic

Oh, my God. Okay, good. Good to know that. Good to know that.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So you know the next step, you determine that this is a bunch of surfers, right? Johnny Utah, who's never surfed before is like, okay, well, I'm going to go purchase a brand new surfboard and go to the hardest part of the ocean to try to start surfing.

Steve

Yeah, well, it is Papas's idea because he even says, I cannot just walk around with this thing, you know, pretend he's like, well, no, they'll sniff you out real quick. They'll take river. And obviously Papas being probably like, what, in his 50s, right. Is not going to be able to blend in the way that a 25 year old Johnny Utah is gonna be able to blend in with these people. So he's got to learn how to surf. But he doesn't really go about it in a very smart way. He kind of just gets in the water and pretty much almost dies right away. Like the movie could have been over after like 15 minutes if he had just drowned.

Nic

Just ex quarterback washes up on the rocks.

Steve

It would have been a hell of a, hell of a headline. But in, in drowning, he meets the kind of third major character of the movie, a woman named Tyler, who, I've got to be honest, I've never met a woman named Tyler. I knew plenty of guys named Tyler, but Tyler is played by Lori Petty and she rescues Utah from the surf as he is being tumbled left and right. She drags him out, screams at him, tells him what of an idiot he is and you know, that he needs to stay the hell out of there. And so of course he does what any good cop would do, which is spy on her.

Nic

Yeah, yeah. And that was a good rescue that she was. She cared about his life, but not about him in any way.

Steve

Right?

Nic

Like, I don't want this sack of meat to die, but I hope I never see this guy again.

Steve

It's literally all about, if there is a dead body here, it's going to ruin my surfing because there's going to be like cops and like CSI investigation. They're going to shut the beach down. I want to surf.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So this asshole Is not allowed to die here. Which she literally says, if you're going to commit suicide, go to somebody else's, you know, break or whatever. Right?

Nic

Yeah, yeah. She's not interested in him, but he's very persistent.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And he kind of has a little background info on her after he meets her for the first time. So knowing what he knows about her background, he makes up a story for himself that he knows will appeal to her. I think her parents had died in a accident of some sort. And he goes up and basically tells her about, oh, you know, I gotta make the most out of life and whatever. I want to surf. Also, my parents died, so can we be friends now?

Steve

Oh, my God.

Nic

So dark and. And, you know, she's easy to sway, I guess.

Steve

Well, you know, I think he's a.

Nic

Compelling story and he doesn't seem like a liar. He was out there trying to surf at first.

Steve

Right. It's cleared. So from her perspective, this looks like a guy clearly doesn't know what he's doing. Doesn't know shit about surfing. Nearly killed himself trying to surf. Now is asking for her help. She doesn't want to do it, but, you know, one orphan to another, basically, she's got a soft spot for this, what this guy's going through. And, you know, he talks about the reason he wants to learn to serv is because he was living for his parents. He was always making choices his parents wanted him to make. And it was when they died, he realized he needed to live for himself. It is a great story if it's true. And given that it's not, fuck you, Johnny Utah. Like, God damn. And I was really. I have always hated this kind of part of it. And luckily it does come back to haunt the character that he does it. So it pays off. The storytellers are doing a good job, but it is a thing where it's like, man, this makes takes like Utah's a.

Nic

He's looking bad, right?

Steve

He's looking back real bad. It is a really dark thing to sort of use the orphan angle to try to get in with somebody. But he does, and it works. She agrees to help him out.

Nic

Yeah. Another thing that they didn't address as being a lie in this movie, but just kind of popped a big question mark up over my head. Johnny Utah said he had a football scholarship to law school.

Steve

Well, did he say that exactly? Because I. There's definitely.

Nic

They didn't break down the full thing, but he basically. Obviously to go to law school at a football scholarship and maybe he had some other scholarship that paid for the rest.

Steve

And I guess it was very weird because later. A little later on, just skipping ahead of. We'll come back a second. But a little later on, he really. When he's recognized by Bod later as number nine, Johnny Utah, quarterback of the Iowa State Buckeyes, he makes a comment about, like, he blew out his knee in the Rose bowl playing against usc, and that's why he couldn't go pro. He had two years to recover, so he went to law school instead. And, like, all this stuff. And he's only 25. So I'm like, like, so, huh? Like, how is this time you were.

Nic

One of those, like, five years where he gets, like, a law degree and a bachelor's thing? Because, like, people do with masters and stuff.

Steve

Yes, but a master's degree is already only two years. A law degrees, three. It just doesn't. The math. Doesn't math on Utah's backstory at all. And given that we know he's undercover and talking to people, how much of it are we. Is even real? Like, we know he's really a quarterback because Papas calls him a quarterback, you know, and obviously Bodhi recognizes him as. Him as the quarterback. So, like, that part is all true. He was a quarterback at Ohio State. There's no denying that.

Nic

Yeah, that. That just was funny to me. Like, when they say stuff like that, where it's like, okay, you can't explain this for five sentences. You just have to make it short. Tyler agrees to help him surf. There's a good montage of her kind of helping him surf. And hard to tell exactly how many days this takes place for. It might all be the same. Feels like a week, might be a while.

Steve

It felt like a few days because.

Nic

There were different times of day. She had to meet it at 6am And.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And she's teaching him how to surf. And then Utah just notices out in the waves during one of their breaks, he sees this other guy surfing who's.

Steve

Really, really quite good.

Nic

Oh, man, that guy's really ripping it up. And that's where we're introduced to Bodhi and where Tyler. Tyler explains who Bode is.

Steve

Yeah, and the funny part is. Is, like, I don't know if people went into it. This was a little, little bit that I picked up on. I've recently had to learn some Sanskrit words for some voiceover work I've been doing. And she says, yeah, that's Bodhi. They call him the Bodhisattva. And Bodhisattva is actually a Sanskrit word for like, like a Buddhist teacher or mentor or like an enlightened person that is leading other people. Like, it's not, you're not necessarily like, like a yogi, but like it is sort of a role of stature, you know, in sort of the enlightened community of sort of Buddhism and some of that stuff. So basically his name's not Bodhi. Bodhi, yeah. That's just a nickname they, they call him, they call him Bodhisattva. The nickname is Bodhisattva. So his name is not actually Bodhi, which I thought was interesting because I know plenty of people had kids in the 90s and named them Bodhi.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Like legitimately.

Nic

Yeah, yeah.

Steve

But it is actually apparently a term that refers to like teacher, enlightened teacher.

Nic

So very. And, and also a big blow to Steely Dan that this is the thing that most people know Bodhisattva from rather than their song Bodhisattva. Oh, well, this is funny when Bodhi comes out of the water and Utah is kind of talking to Tyler and he, he catches Utah's eyes and gives him the shush, shush. I'm going to sneak up on her. She, she introduces him or just, you know, this is my friend and he looks at Utah surfboard. He says, that sure is a surfboard. Like, looks like a 57 Chevy I used to have. So he's already throwing a little shade at it.

Steve

Absolutely. Well, it is a big, dumb, touristy looking. And we look at everybody else's surfboard, it's like they're shorter, they'll narrow or they come to more of a point.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

You know, which seems, which feels like I don't know anything about surfing personally, but it feels like maybe that is a little harder to control, but gives you much more control over your direction stuff. Whereas the larger one is maybe easier to stay on, but now you're lumbering around sort of, you think about like a longboard, like a skateboard. It's doing tricks on a skateboard. So. But yeah, he does look a bit like a, a surf tourist at this point for sure.

Nic

This is one of my favorite scenes, just visually. And I always like when they do this where they're doing some kind of nighttime activity which is lit by everybody's cars all parked in a circle or square with the headlights on. And they have some beach football going on. We got the surfers just playing in jeans and like leather vests on the.

Steve

Beach, like a biker gang playing, playing.

Nic

A little 5 on 5 tackle touch hybrid beach football Co ed.

Steve

There's definitely tackling going on.

Nic

Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff going on. At a certain point it's, it's like getting competitive a bit between Utah, Bodie and Bode is taking off after catching a pass. So in this five on five game, Utah goes by about 12 offensive blockers and on the, on the 50 yards that they're playing on, he runs about two and a half miles down into the ocean to tackle Bodhi.

Steve

It does seem like wherever the end zone was marked, Bodhi has passed it long ago. Right.

Nic

He looked like he was stealing the football at that point.

Steve

I'm taking this, I'm going home.

Nic

And, and it looks like there's a little bit of a tussle. But somebody recognizes Utah and the group of guys that least looks like they would know college football is all very much into college football. This is not an SEC style, aesthetic, crowd. This is like.

Steve

And look back then. So I guess in part, okay, if you're looking back at that time, the 80s 90s, a few things were very, were different, very different than they are today in college football. One of which is that the, the Rose bowl, like there was no national championship game, the bcs, all this kind of stuff we have today, there's no playoffs or anything. So the Rose bowl was always just between the winner of the pack 10 and the winner of the big 10. And so there were real rivalries that would get built up over time. And USC had a lot of dominant years back in those days. And so if you cared about football at all and you lived in la, the Rose bowl game was like one game you probably watched every year. It was, it was like a second super bowl in a lot of ways because either UCLA or USC was often playing in that game. And then against another major school, it would be Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, I don't know. You know, there are a handful of schools that were regularly win out in the Big Ten and come out and play at the Rose Bowl. It's a neat thing. And it was sort of an LA identity thing for at least a while between the parade and the game. So I'll give it to them. But like, you're right, it is a little strange that all of these bank robbing, biker gang looking surfer dudes. Yeah. Are totally into the fact that this guy played in the Rose bowl three years ago.

Nic

Right. Well. And I guess it's maybe a little comment on there was more of a monoculture in a lot of ways. Back in the early 90s where it's like, well, everyone saw the World Series even if they don't give a shit about baseball. And now you can kind of point out, based on somebody's how. Based on how somebody's dressed, how they look. He probably doesn't like college football back then. It's like, well, there were three channels.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And we were all stoned in Bodhi's thing, you know.

Steve

And the Rose bowl game in particular was always on New Year's Day. What else were you doing?

Nic

True.

Steve

Right. There was no NFL football being played that day. It was like the Rose bowl was on. And if the local team was playing, it's like, yeah, I can see it.

Nic

There we go.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

But yeah, great memories on these stoner surfers. They remember uniform numbers and everything.

Steve

It's interesting. Interesting. Still doesn't quite line up, but we'll move on and we'll give it to W. Peter Eiffel.

Nic

I guess after this football scene, we're kind of finding out that they're doing some analysis on the very little amount of evidence that they've retrieved from one of the bank robbery scenes, which was a hair sample.

Steve

Right. They say something. A security guard grabbed a ponytail.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And got a little bit of hair. And so they've got this available to them to analyze and they're able to see these chemicals. They have to go look at the different beaches to find out where the water matches this particular chemical composition.

Nic

They figure if they find a sample from surfers at certain beaches where the profile of the chemicals match, then they at least know which beach to look at for their guys because they, they determine that the surfers are territorial. Right. Which we find out in a much harder way very soon here.

Steve

Yeah. Which. And it's absolutely accurate, I think, I think you know something true at least about surfers throughout popular culture, like I think every single TV show, movie, whatever, that involved surfers that I've ever seen, they talk about it be them doing territorial. Right. This is like a locals only break or this is, you know, our group surfs here and you, if you just, you know, come in and tourists, that doesn't work. Right. So that makes a lot of sense. I did wonder when they start going around looking for hair samples. Right. From people. First of all, it's ludicrous the way they just literally go cut people's hair and stuff, whatever. But they show the beach and I don't know if, I don't know where in LA county this is, but they show the beach and like, right next to the beach are these factory, big factory, smoke stacked? I'm like, is there really somewhere in LA where it's that close to, like a beach people populate and surf at?

Nic

I don't think so. Remember that TV show Step by Step? It was like a TGIF show. There was a scene at the beginning of the show, the intro song, and then they're zooming out. It's showing the family all on like a roller coaster, Right. And as it's zooming out, it's basically showing that this wooden roller coaster is right. Like the waves are breaking right up against the bottom of it where it's like, that's not anywhere. No, I think it was a step by step style situation with this factory. But it was very prominent. They didn't talk about it, but it was like very prominent background. It was like children of men behind them.

Steve

Yeah. They were clearly trying to show how it's like, well, you know, they have to close the beaches because of the chemicals. And this is like, you know, this is why the chemicals here would be unique to this beach. Because, look, there's that. And the next beach, you know, five miles down the road has a different factory.

Nic

Right, right.

Steve

Obviously, every beach in L. A has an accompanying smokestack.

Nic

The terroir from the smokestack. Yeah, exactly.

Steve

Oh, my God. So ridiculous.

Nic

So, so they're going around the beach and one of the things they do is Angelo basically grabs, you know, catches guys smoking weed under their blanket and grabs his hair and snips off a little bit of it. Utah tells a guy that he's got. You got a big sucker going right into your ear and goes to grab it and pulls his hair out. So that's very funny. And then Utah's trying to surf in this area as well, because he can't just be going around pulling.

Steve

Well, no, they. They though. No, no, no, that. That's the surfing is when they go back and they find the match. So they figure out which is right. Then he's like, well, now I got to scope this beach out. I got to figure out who surfs here, who the regulars are, who the locals are that are. That are using this break. And so he goes out to surf and he is not welcome. He is, he is. He kind of steals a wave from somebody maybe, like, you know, there's definitely a conflict, like right there in the water. He gets punched in the water, which I feel like, like, you know, the way that people look. I've never gotten in like a bar fight in My life. I don't. Don't know about you. You don't seem like the type, but, you know, I've never gotten in a bar fight, but I know people who have, and I know of people who have, like, gotten into fights, punch somebody and they just fall wrong and, like, hit their heads and, like, die. And now you've gotten into, like, you were angry at someone, you just wanted to throw a punch, and you've, like, killed someone, and it's at least manslaughter. Right. I think punching someone who is in the ocean would be right in that alley, because this. If they pass out for even five seconds, right. Their lungs are now full of salt water. Like, this is not good.

Nic

So. Yeah.

Steve

But this guy, whoever this is, I don't remember which exact of these bull.

Nic

You know, I think it was Bunker.

Steve

Yeah. We're about to meet Bunker. You know, punches him right there in the water, and it makes it clear he is not welcome to surf there.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And.

Nic

And, you know, going back to our previous or two movies, previous, the River Wild, there was a scene where one of the characters was saving somebody from drowning.

Steve

Right.

Nic

And he had to punch him to get him to stop struggling and pulling. So we have good punches and bad punches, good water punches and bad.

Steve

That's true. No, no, I think. I think there might have been a life vest involved in the River Wild. And there's definitely no undertow. So I think even though there's. There's a river current you got to deal with, at least you know where it's going, so that's a little. Little smarter. Yeah.

Nic

So, yeah. So Utah gets punched by this guy. The guy's very pissed, like, basically, get the hell out of here. Cuts his little thing that attaches his weather to his surfboard, so he has to go swim and get it. And then afterwards, Utah's, you know, taking way too long of a shower. And another. Another good scene is always where there's a character taking a shower, and then someone approaches them and just turns the.

Steve

Water right on them. It's like, what's going on?

Nic

So he looks around, and he sees one of these individuals looking pretty big and intimidating, and he notices there's like three or four of these guys around him, and he goes, okay, I get it. This is the part where you tell me all about how locals rule and yuppie insects like me shouldn't be surfing your break. And then they say, and then Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Steve

With the worst haircut he's ever had. And he's had some bad ones. It's real bad.

Nic

He is. He is a bad haircut. All time champion. And he's really doing it in this one. And I love the way he says, that would be a waste of time.

Steve

Right? Yeah. I do feel like real quickly on Anthony Kiedis hair, I do feel like if you were to line up, you know, worst haircuts of any celebrity of all time, sort of like Steph Curry and seasons leading in, you know, most threes in a season where he feels like four of the top six spots, that's Kiedis. He's the Steph Curry of bad hair.

Nic

Kiedis has got the belt most years. Exactly. Right. So for sure.

Steve

But yeah, so basically, these guys, they beat the hell out of. Out of Utah. Beat him up real bad. Papas who has been watching his back, but. But he couldn't see him during this, does sort of eventually show up, but before that, Bodhi shows up. And so, you know, Bodhi is able to sort of like, you know, try to talk these guys down, but they don't want to hear it. So Bodhi and Utah together beat up these other four, you know, idiots. Basically, we find out later they're Nazis, according to Bodhi. Right. All right. I'm not sure we saw any actual.

Nic

We didn't see much Nazi stuff, but I don't know. You got to pile bad characteristics onto these guys.

Steve

I guess there wasn't a lot of ethos on display, but, you know, like, it's okay. Like, they're not good dudes, they're bad dudes. And so, you know, Bodhi's able to rescue Utah, which, you know, obviously endears Bodhi to Utah. But I was a little surprised that our relatively sharp guy, Utah, did not for a moment think about, oh, hey, Bodhi surfs here too, right? Like, if Bodhi surfs this break as well. Oh, that's an interesting.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

You know, think he's immediately thinks, well, these guys are bad guys. Clearly, these are my bad guys.

Nic

Yep.

Steve

These are my bank robbers.

Nic

Yep. And. But Bodhi. Bodhi was telling him about the guys as they're walking away.

Steve

Right.

Nic

And kind of doing the debrief and who are those guys? And Bodhi's telling him that they're Nazis, whatever. And he's like, they're into some real wild. And then Utah says something like, oh, what illegal stuff? And then Bod was very cool. And just like, I don't know, man. Like, his dismissal of that was very smart of a way. Like, it's like, yeah, a. Still keeping a little distance because he doesn't fully know Utah yet. But also just like, dude, I'm not gonna. I'm not getting into this.

Steve

Stitches.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Like so. Yeah. So Utah goes back to Papas and says, hey, man, we got these guys. They're able to follow them, basically. They're. They're. They're driving like idiots down. Down the Pacific coast highway, swerving in and out of traffic.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So they're able to find out where they live. And the. The FBI agents who don't like Papas and Utah have to come and relieve them for stakeout duty because. Well, I don't know if this is why. There's probably just their time, but Utah's got a party to go to. Yeah. Right. And so Bode has invited Utah to a party the night before he raids his supposed ex president bank robbers. I mean, this seems like not the best choice of a way to spend the late hours of your evening. But also there's a girl involved. So.

Nic

Yeah, he's got it. I mean, at least tie a curfew to that or something.

Steve

Right.

Nic

When the. When the surfers, the Nazi surfers, Anthony Kiedis crew was driving away, it was really funny. They're all hanging out of the vehicle. They're terrorizing everybody on the road. It reminded me a lot of the. In Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. The extreme assholes. The guys that lived in his apartment who just. Everything they do has to be the worst. So even when they pulled up to their own house, they just drove onto the lawn of it.

Steve

They're like, ah, fuck my own house. What? Funny enough, it actually made me think a little more of Zoolander's roommates in that movie. And the way they were partying at the gas station, they're just like, whoa, go so crazy. Obviously very different vibes off of those guys. Off of.

Nic

Although piggybacking off that though. The next thing that they show. So they show the bad guy house and then Utah is going to his party. And as they're establishing that we're going to do some night serving, we're going to have a bonfire. The way that they start the bonfire is he takes a bottle of lighter fluid sideways and stabs it with a bowie knife and just throws it on the fire. So very Zoolander.

Steve

Very. Because you could have just unscrewed the cap, pal.

Nic

Really could have. Really strange. This is. I need to come up with an official name, but it's like the guy washing his fist corollary from Toy soldiers.

Steve

Just.

Nic

What can we do to make this just a little bit more extreme?

Steve

Right. We need this person to appear tougher or more dangerous or, you know, more off the. Off the chain kind of, you know, wild card kind of person. And so we're going to have them do something patently ridiculous that also serves no purpose other than to show that.

Nic

He has a knife. He's reckless, he's.

Steve

Why wouldn't you do it this way? Of course. Absolutely. Yeah. I also was like, at this point. So they. They decide, you know, they're going to take Utah out surfing at night. They do the bonfire, which I think is. Makes a lot of sense that way, you know where the shore is. I think it's probably pretty disorienting. I was thinking surfing at night must be one of the most dangerous things you can do. Right. I wouldn't.

Nic

It's all fun and games till one piece of seaweed touches your leg.

Steve

Yeah. It's. It seems like a bad idea. But they have fun. They go out and they surf at night. He and Tyler hook up and actually end up sleeping together on the beach all night long. Which sounds horrifying. I look like real quick. I love the ocean.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And I love the coast. Like, I love coastal communities. My wife and I are big fans of the Monterey Peninsula. We go down, like, Pacific Grove, Monterey, Carmel, as often as we can. It's a great area and it's beautiful and I love boats in the ocean. Whatever. And I. I hate the beach, man. I can't. I hate sand. I don't ever want it anywhere near me. The idea of sleeping on a beach is like, that is. I'm noped out of this whole thing. I'm quitting the FBI at that point. Yeah. I can't do it. So I. Anyway.

Nic

How about having sex on the beach?

Steve

I mean, even imagine.

Nic

It's just. It's very risky, man.

Steve

Lord. The amount of. Just friction.

Nic

Yeah. There's a lot of. Yeah. A lot of possibilities.

Steve

Good kind of friction.

Nic

No, no, no, no. The exfoliating type of friction.

Steve

Exactly.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Not okay.

Nic

But this is a great. Because it's kind of a. Okay. They hook up and it's a downtime, but then we're right back into it because he wakes up, oh, I'm getting late.

Steve

I gotta go to work.

Nic

And he's there, and it's not like I gotta get to the police station because we're staging before we go to raid. He gets there, and the guys are already on the side of the house with their guns.

Steve

Drawn with their FBI windbreakers and like.

Nic

Everything and ready to rip those flaps.

Steve

And then Papas is ready to go to the front and kind of like he's pretending like his dog is missing or something. Right? But I love it when they start. I think Utah is the one who peeks in one of the windows. And I just noticed that one of the guys, I can't remember any of their names, don't care. It's not Anthony Kiedis is having beerios for breakfast, which is the breakfast of champions. As all college students know. I have absolutely had bereos for breakfast and totally forgot that that was in this movie.

Nic

But yeah, it kind of only works with Cheerios.

Steve

Yeah, it's gotta be the plain regular.

Nic

You can't have like sugar honey nut Berrios. You can't go Frosted Flakes.

Steve

Maybe Rice Krispies. Plain Rice Krispies would work, I suppose, but it was always Berios.

Nic

Yeah, Papa's brilliant way of just kind of smoothly talking to people as he moves through the neighborhood is to pretend that his dog is lost.

Steve

Right?

Nic

But what he says is, have you seen my dog? It's like a little dog. There's no description of the dog at all. He's like, hey, have you seen my dog? Is it a little dog? And the first guy that he walks by is this Jamaican looking dude who's wearing kind of like a cross color style T shirt. He's like, you see my dog? He walks by and the guy's like naman. And like I'm a sucker for. For a brief Jamaican appearance. It really made my day.

Steve

Oh, maybe we'll have to watch half bake together at some point later on. A lot of Mars there.

Nic

So the agents, they're queued up outside the house. They're waiting for the raid. We got this guy pouring the beer on his Cheerios and Utah is looking through the side window. Okay, this is cool. It's a good place to be. And then the neighbor starts up the world's smallest lawnmower. That sounds like a 747.

Steve

So loud. And it's one of those little. It almost looks like one of those push mowers. Doesn't even have an engine on it. It's just sort of the little spirally blades, right? Very strange, but very loud.

Nic

Very loud. There's a lot of good chaos here. So Angelo's basically approaching the guys in the house. I don't know what it is that tip them off necessarily. I mean, they're probably living a very paranoid lifestyle anyway. But they're just like, something's wrong.

Steve

I think they're all on meth.

Nic

Like.

Steve

Yeah, legit. Apparently. They've got meth in the house. They're on meth. They're meth dealers, we learn later. So they're probably, you know, on their own stash. And somebody has come to the door. Like, that's all that matters. Right. If you're talking about, like, a meth house, somebody knocked. Yeah. Everybody, you know, either knows when and how to go in and out of that house on their own, does not just knock at the door. Yeah, right. And one of their. There's a couple of ladies there with them, and one of them answers the door and is, like, talking to Papa, trying to get him to go away. And he's being persistent. And maybe it's that persistence that sort of, like, really starts freaking him out.

Nic

Like the long enough alarm start to get rid of things. Yeah.

Steve

Because if it really was a person's looking for their dog and say, no, no dog here, that person would have moved on right to the next house to look for their.

Nic

He's like, no, no, I haven't described it yet to you. It is a little dog.

Steve

As a little dog. But yeah, this is like one of the more kind of brutal raid scenes in. In any movie. This really was, like. I kind of forgot, like, how. How violent this. This next sequence is and all the different stuff that happens. And Utah just getting absolutely. Just clocked by a fully nude woman who just got out of the shower and would you would assume be slipping all over the tile floor herself. But no, she is able to just wail on him and, like, slam him into a mirror and everything. It was just like, man.

Nic

I think they have those little grip tape stickers all over the whole bathroom, not just in the shower.

Steve

Sex wax.

Nic

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, how much of that was he just, like, letting happen? After a while, if I'm gonna go out, I may as well let her hop on top of me and start punching my face.

Steve

I've had worse.

Nic

Like, so a couple of these guys, at this point, they get killed, right? I think one of the guys. Two of the guys get shot and it's just chaos. One is, like, takes the woman from the front door as a hostage, even though she was kind of part of their crew. And I got your man style situation, right. Papas doesn't have any hesitation and just great shot. Blast that guy right through the eyes.

Steve

Right between the eyes. Yeah.

Nic

And then we've got Utah inside there and he's fighting one of the bigger dudes. Who I think his name Warchild. A bigger, like, Samoan.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

He looks like he's like Pacific Islander kind of guy.

Steve

Big, big guy.

Nic

And they get into this great fight that takes them outside to the lawn.

Steve

Through the window?

Nic

Yes, through the window. Warchild pulls a knife.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And Utah is just trying. How am I going to get this knife from him? And he's able to hold the knife right up to the blades of the mower and have it like, Right. Which taken out of his hand.

Steve

Take a look for a second here. I remember mowing the lawn a lot when I was a kid. My dad always had an electric mower, so we had like the long extension cord that had to travel. But I understand the concept of using a gas powered mower as well. Didn't they all work in a way where you had to hold something to keep them running?

Nic

Oh, yeah.

Steve

Standard thing. Now, I guess this was a really old mower, but every mower I used.

Nic

No, you hold the handle right.

Steve

And if you let go of the handle, it stops.

Nic

Right.

Steve

So was the homeowner standing there watching them to the two of them fight, holding the thing going and it's like not letting go. As Utah is getting pushed closer and closer to these blades, there's a. Seems like a bad idea.

Nic

There's a deleted scene where both of his hands get chopped off at the wrist. So they're still technically gripping onto their rigor mortis. But great intensity in this scene. I mean, really well done. First you think, okay, well, the knife is gone, there goes the threat. And then the fight kind of flips lips. And Warchild is pushing Utah's face closer and closer towards the blade, which I've seen this a bunch of times, but it. It's a very tense.

Steve

Yeah. And it does beg the question if. If Warchild had been successful in kind of messing him up at all with that blade, would Keanu Reeves still have one most desirable male at the 1992 MTV Movie Awards?

Nic

Might have gone to Swayze. Might have, yeah.

Steve

Might have. Something Patrick should have talked to his agent about.

Nic

So he's able to. There the fight goes. But pop it in one of the best precision shots I've ever seen. Shoots the motor in the perfect place and the blade stops. And they're able to dispatch this guy and get themselves safe. Yeah, really great scene. And if that's not enough for, like, how. God, this really went fucking wrong because we were trying to bust in on these guys. We weren't here for a shootout. We really messed up, but at least we got the bad guys. And then we have Tom Sizemore's character, who was actually the guy pouring beer on his Cheerios.

Steve

Oh, was it really? Oh, okay. I wasn't sure.

Nic

So he's been, he's basically telling them, I've been undercover going after these drug dealers and you guys just fucked up three months of my work. And he's talking a lot about, I don't go to my house at night, my wife makes me stay at the Ramada. You think I like this haircut? You think I like these clothes?

Steve

It's a very Sizemore role. It's uncredited, by the way, if you actually watch the credits. Sizemore did not receive a credit initially for this. It was only his third screen appearance in his career. So. Yeah, so very, very good.

Nic

I mean, he does have a lot of. He was a very, you know, troubled person, but incredibly good. Very. Yeah. So I love that extra wrinkle. They didn't have to add that complication to it. Right. But because the department would have probably been kind of against them anyway just for kind of, hey, now we got two people dead and a lot of paperwork. But now you also up this bigger operation.

Steve

And it's another indication, this is something I think, that doesn't fly as well in movies maybe made now or more recently where, you know, inter agency communications are much better today post sort of creation of the Department of Homeland security and post 9 11. But in the 90s, this was a legit thing, like agencies didn't talk to each other. The FBI had no idea what the DEA was doing. The DEA had no idea what the ATF was doing. Even though these are all federal law enforcement agencies, they all answer to the attorney General and yet none of them had any communication whatsoever. And so it's totally legit that this would have happened, that there would have been a dea, you know, thing. Now I think there's a lot more. I think an ad, you know, the, the advancement of communication technology helps, but also just they're being told, you need to tell each other what you're all doing, you know, to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen. But it happened a lot back then. I mean, I don't know about a lot happened a lot in movies.

Nic

It still has to be very compartmentalized or it's not going to work properly.

Steve

Right. I mean, that's. Especially when you're dealing with undercover and you're dealing with, you know, anybody in kind of, of any deep, deep cover situation. You do need to limit the number of people who know. And that includes other agencies. So. And then. And of course, there's the additional issue of, like, well, what if it was lapd? Are you really going to tell all the municipal agencies and state agency what. But really, you know, these are two federal groups. They probably should have been talking to each other. Yeah. Yeah.

Nic

So now Utah is kind of back hanging with the surfers. Right.

Steve

They're.

Nic

They're surfing. One of the things he notices as the surfers are out in the way. He's out in the water, and then he's back on the beach watching them. Them. And he sees one of the guys kind of mooning.

Steve

Right.

Nic

The other guys, and realizes, like, I've seen before. Yeah, I know that butt crack.

Steve

It's really. I. Yeah. How. Like, I get that we need. He needs to figure. He needs to do something to figure out who they are before they can figure out who he is. I mean, that's just the plot needs that.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

But this is how really, like, it feels kind of cheap. It feels, like, unearned. You know, it's just kind of like, oh, he sees a surfer mooning other surfers and realizes, oh, that's the bank robber that mooned the security camera.

Nic

Yeah. Or maybe it just triggers in his head, like, okay, these are the kind of guys. This is what these guys do.

Steve

Maybe. But he's pretty confident that he's got this because they go. They go quickly to, like he says, he follows them. And they end up, you know, what is it? Roach and Bodhi end up staking out a place. They go into a bank, but then they come back telling Pappas this. And so, you know, he's pretty convinced right away, no, they're casing this joint. Now, maybe it's the combination of seeing the mooning, then following them and seeing them go to this bank that, you know, he doesn't have a good reason to think they have a reason to be at. And they're there for 20 minutes.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

That's a long time to spend in a bank, I guess, unless the lines are super long. So he's pretty confident that he's got his guys.

Nic

Yeah. Oh, one thing where he's talking to Papas about what he's discovered about them. And when he's described, I think he's running through, you know, Bodhi's schedule, the consistencies in his schedule. I don't know if you picked up on this. He said has, and he eats lunch at Patrick's Roadhouse.

Steve

Oh, no, I Didn't. I mean, I heard it, but, yeah, I didn't. I didn't. It didn't click to me. Roadhouse.

Nic

Yeah, I love that. That they. That they put that in reference to Patrick Swayze's Roadhouse. They're staking out the bank, right?

Steve

They're trying to watch the bank because they're not. They're not looking to, like, try to follow the guys around where they're just like, let's just. We know they're gonna hit this bank. Let's just be there when they do it. But Papas is getting hungry. This is. We've already talked about it. This is the famous, you know, like. Like, place around the corner. Does the best meatball subs in the city. I want you to go get two of them. You talk, give me two, you know, the whole deal. So he goes around the corner to go get subs. Meanwhile, he rolls up a car full of suited Ex Presidents running into the bank. That Papas is, like, reading the comics or something.

Nic

He doesn't see right behind Utah while he's ordering, right? Getting these balls, getting Papas is two meatball subs. Utah does not fully respect Papas because he's not getting a meatball sub as well. Tuna on wheat, which is just. Just fits with his character. That's an early 90s. That's what you'd be like.

Steve

Oh, what, do you also jog?

Nic

What kind of a health nut are you? Tuna fish.

Steve

That is very much in the line of, I take the chicken or they take the skin off my chicken, sir.

Nic

For sure. For sure. But the Ex Presidents have entered this bank behind them, where they're like, what the. Did you see this? I didn't see this. Papas was reading Calvin and Hobbs.

Steve

That's what it was. Yeah, yeah.

Nic

He's like, oh, this Calvin and Hobbs is funny. The guy comes up to the window before he sends him to the sandwich shop selling oranges. And the way that Papas gets him to go away, he says, we got lots. We got lots.

Steve

Lots of oranges. A dollar for a whole bag of oranges Seems pretty good to me, man.

Nic

I don't know.

Steve

But, yeah, so now they. They. The bank robbers are in the bank, but they're not 100% sure until they come out, right? This is going on. And. And so now, you know, Utah knows he's right, right? They stake this place out. Then this was the one hit. Clearly, he's got the right guys.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And he yells out, stop, FBI, freeze, whatever, synaptic. Now, this was the Thing that first of all, this next sequence is incredible. There's a great car chase through the streets of la, but they end up having to ditch the car. And they take the time, kind of, to the chagrin of Bod's compatriots, like they're pissed at him, he's taking so much time, but he full on torches the car like he doesn't want to leave any evidence behind. He fills it with gasoline, torches it with the lighter with gasoline stuff. So that's really smart just showing us again that Bode really kind of does for the most part have his ducks in a row and, you know, but now there's a foot chase. So now like, you know, Papas is trying to chase the guys in the car, but he loses them. So Utah has to get out and chase Bodhi. And the whole chase sequence is fantastic. So good in and out of houses and backyards. They end up in the LA river. At which point, of course, that's when Utah's old football injury comes back to haunt him and he kind of busts his knee, you know, going after Bodhi. And he has a chance, he has a chance to shoot Bodhi. I mean, he has a chance to shoot. Well, I guess he doesn't for sure yet know that's Bodhi. It's one of the guys.

Nic

Right?

Steve

Right. It's Reagan. We know Reagan is Bodhi, but like he knows this is one of the guys and he has a chance and he doesn't do it well.

Nic

When Utah first identified himself as an FBI agent, when he saw them coming out of the bank, he had his gun pointed at them and it looked like one of the passengers. The Nixon had his a good shot at Utah and Reagan. Bodey basically said hold off.

Steve

Right? Right.

Nic

And I think that maybe was some recognition between both of them and Utah maybe was returning the favor at the end of that chase scene. That chase scene was great. It's just unexpected around every turn and I love them just going into these people's houses. Bodhi runs through a slider and locks it very smartly. After he runs through without missing a beat, Utah just in full sprint, picks something heavy up off the patio and smashes it through the glass to keep chasing him.

Steve

So great.

Nic

The visual of Reagan torching that car at the gas station, making his own flamethrower was just incredible. So just really, really like high end action stuff in this movie.

Steve

Really, really fantastic. And this is a part where I wrote down in my notes here, I want to mention. So. So this is the the situation we're in now, because now the Bodhi gets away. You know, Utah's got to go back. And Papa, first of all, doesn't believe that, that, that Utah missed. Utah is again, 100% shot. And, and so, you know, he fired off wooden cutouts. Yeah, he fired. Ryan. Second, he fired off, like six rounds into the air, basically. So the idea that he wouldn't hit him at all, you know, Papa doesn't buy it. But here's what I. Here's what I wrote down. What we know at this point in the movie, which is Utah knows that they are the ex Presidents. The ex Presidents know that Utah is a Fed. He knows that. That they know he's a Fed. Yeah. Okay. But the ex Presidents don't know that Utah knows that they are the ex Presidents and they don't know that he knows that they know he's a fed. Do you see what I'm saying? So I feel like there's a point here where the ex Presidents, the gang, Bodie and the gang, still believe they have an information advantage over Utah.

Nic

Yeah, right.

Steve

And that. And that, I think, is an important thing to understand when we get to the next scene because. Because Utah really plays along with this whole parachuting. We're going to go for a jump thing in a way that doesn't necessarily make sense unless you consider that. And you know that he still has an information advantage over them. He knows things that they don't know, which is really. He knows how much he knows.

Nic

Right.

Steve

And then they don't know as much as he knows.

Nic

It's surprising. I mean, Johnny Utah is just kind of a. He's an extreme athlete, whether he likes it or not, even as a football player. I mean, he goes for the adrenaline. And it's very surprising, even in the situation where you're playing 5D chess to do something where the downside is I'm jumping out of a plane that maybe my parachute doesn't open with a backpack on, like. Yeah, backpack full of wrenches.

Steve

Exactly.

Nic

So, yeah, I mean, big, big balls. But Utah takes big risks and he's really intent on taking these guys down.

Steve

Yeah. Yeah. So. So they. They basically come early morning, they come get him. Oh, actually, no, wait, this. Is this where Tyler realizes.

Nic

Okay, so he's. He's Tyler. Something like, I want to confess something to you. But then she's just kind of like, shut up and kissed me. And he's like, well, okay.

Steve

Because I think she thinks he's going to say I love you.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And so she's like, oh, no, no, not yet. Or, like, doesn't have to be right now or something like that. But he's like, I need to tell you I'm an FBI agent is really what he's gearing himself up for. But then they wake up in the morning. Is that when she.

Nic

Yeah, so she. He's sleeping in the bed at her place or whatever.

Steve

It's his place. Okay.

Nic

And, yeah, so she finds his badge and gun and she tells him by just shooting the pillow next to him. Great feather explosion. One of the better feather explosions we've seen. And yeah, she like, you lied to me. You're a piece of shit. I don't want anything to do with you.

Steve

Specifically confronts him about, like, are your parents even dead? And he admits, yeah, they live in Ohio. They live in Columbus or whatever.

Nic

Right?

Steve

Like, yeah, so crazy.

Nic

So now he's gonna go with the boys. And he also maybe doesn't necessarily know what Tyler is communicating it to BoD because even though it's kind of. Him and Tyler are close, he. She has an attachment to him that he can't fully be confident that she wouldn't sell him out to Bod.

Steve

That's true.

Nic

And with all this tension, we have the surfers all pick up Utah to go on the skydiving trip. And it's a great. I didn't time it, but it's probably a little longer than you'd actually. Free fall.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

I hope you get eight minutes of free fall in a normal skydive.

Steve

Obviously depends on exactly how high they get to start with, you know. But, yeah, it is a long parachute jump, but it's very exciting. Again, another example of the fantastic cinematography of the film. I don't know where the hell they are, what body of water. Beautiful.

Nic

Everything that you're seeing is just incredible.

Steve

Like Mammoth Lakes or something. I don't know how far from LA they've gone, but it's, you know, it's really beautiful stuff. But. But, yeah, now they. They. They kind of put him through this and it's safe, and they give him an actual parachute. There's even a great sequence on the plane, like, oh, you should take this bag. No, take this, whatever. Because at first I was like. Like, oh, man, he's going to be in a. In a Man in Black. Vizzini, which cup of wine do I take? Thing. But there's so much switching that you go, this must not be a trick, because there wouldn't. They wouldn't even be able to keep track of that many Switches to try to figure out which is the right backpack. Yeah, parachute.

Nic

And it's not going to end with someone saying, well, I've spent 20 years building up a tolerance to falling out of a plane without a parachute, so it doesn't matter which one I have.

Steve

That is a good point. This is not I. Okay. Powder we're talking about. Yeah, so. So, yeah, so now they do the jump Utah. That's great. But then Bod's like, hey, I got something to show you, man. You got, you got to come check this out. After they start, you know, they're packing the parachutes back up. And on the smallest screen I've ever seen on anything ever. Yeah, a 2 inch screen on top of like some kind of big transmitter device. I guess we receive, I'm guessing a satellite image.

Nic

I didn't know if it was like a VHS tape or like a podcast.

Steve

Or something, but it's hard to tell. But, but we see that, that Tyler has been kidnapped and she is being held by. What's the name of Bodhi's body here?

Nic

Rosie. Rosie, who I think is played by the actor Lee Turgison.

Steve

Interesting.

Nic

Who's in Wayne's World. I believe he's one of the friends in Wayne's World. He was in HBO's Oz and I think he also played Chet on the TV series Weird Science.

Steve

Oh, my gosh. That's interesting. Yeah. But he has, he has basically her at knifepoint. I believe he is actually the one we saw cut open the canister of lighter fluid.

Nic

Bonfire.

Steve

That's him. So we know he knows how to use the knife. Yeah, exactly. So he's there, she's there, and bodies, like, if you don't. If I don't show up where they are when I need to show up where they are, she dies.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So you better help me. And we're going to do one more score basically before they get out of town for the summer or for the, you know, at the end of the summer.

Nic

Bodhi has a really chilling line there. Something about I hate violence. That's why I have Rosie. Like, I don't like doing this stuff, but he loves this kind of stuff and he's not gonna stop. It's just like he's so calm about it and he's saying it matter of factly and being like. Yeah, like, I'm not a violent guy myself, but I'm glad I have this very violent guy working for me.

Steve

Yeah, it's an interesting, you know, the way he's able to absolve himself of the guilt that would come with that kind of violence. Makes him far more sociopathic than anybody who's just a violent person.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Really frustrating, which is great. And you know, let's go down the list. This is great writing, this is great acting by Patrick Swayze. This is fantastic direction by Katherine Bigelow. As usual throughout this film. It's wonderful stuff and it really makes Bodhi a really kind of nasty villain. So they go to rob one more bank. At first everything's normal. They're obviously not going to give Utah ammo in his shotgun, but they need him to hold a weapon so he looks intimidating and he also doesn't get a mask. They don't have a Bush or a Ford or any other president to hand him him. So he's got to go in face to the cameras which is going to be a big problem for Mr. Utah. But you know, they go in and then for some reason, and I don't fully understand this other than I guess he's trying to make a bigger score. But Bodhi sends a couple guys into the vault, which they've never done before.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And he's like, no, get the keys, go into the vault and get it. And between that situation where you know, they're taking more time than usual, they're getting greedier than usual. There's this breakdown of their very well polished, well timed system. We have among the patrons an off duty police officer who is armed, who thinks he is John McClain and he's about to take down, you know, the terrorists.

Nic

Yeah. And I just want to say if there are any off duty police officers listening to the podcast, it's okay to clock out, it's okay to be off work. I mean maybe you stop a robbery but you know you're only going to make it worse in that situation.

Steve

The security guard is begging him not to do anything. Dude, this is a bank. Like they, it's insured. All these people will get their money. You need to stop, like don't do anything stupid. And like how many people end up dead? Like five? Like two of the robbers. Like two of the bank robbers end up getting shot. I believe or no, just maybe just one. But somebody definitely dies.

Nic

Security guard, the cop.

Steve

Security guard, the cop. It's real bad.

Nic

Like yeah, it's really bad. And I think with the vault thing, Bod might have just realized that this is it for me. Cuz they know who the I am. That's a good point. And you can't come back next summer and do more. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to have to start robbing, you know, Australian dogs and I'm not good at the currency conversion.

Steve

Plus there's no fdic. It's not as he can't absolve himself of the guilt as much. I don't know if Australian banks are insured in the same way, but. Yeah, but Roach, Bodhi's buddy Roach takes a slug to the chest. It appears right high up, kind of a very Louis Gossett Jr. And Toy Soldier's final gunshot wound area.

Nic

Kills a bad guy for a good guy. It goes all the way through.

Steve

Exactly right. But Roach doesn't die. That's the point. He does. I don't know, somebody shows up and. Or somebody keeps going and is okay for a while, but. Yeah, that's right. I guess Roach does die there on the scene. It's hard to keep track of how many people everybody gets shot. Some of them die, some of them don't. It gets real hairy at the end here.

Nic

And then if, as an actor, if you're wearing a bulletproof vest versus not, you react the exact same way to getting shot. So it's hard after the fact to be like, oh, okay, he must have had a vest on or did he get missed or whatever.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

When they're leaving. So this whole chaos has gone down and they're just kind of like, what the fuck, man? This isn't how it was supposed to go. Utah gets knocked out, right? And so basically he's coming to as the cops are arriving and he's in trouble, man.

Steve

Well, and it's a combination of LAPD and his own FBI bank robbery crew, right? The guys that don't like him and Papas and, and our John C. McGinley boss guy who is just pissed and I believe Papas gives him one. Right, right. Right in the kisser. Gets him out. Out.

Nic

Yeah. Papas punches him out, which is good, and nobody stops him. He basically says, oh, you guys aren't taking my partner, who I clearly have loyalty to over the department and my oath to the Constitution or whatever, so why don't I drive him to the police station in handcuffs after I punched you out and nobody do anything, right?

Steve

But of course, Papas doesn't take him to the police station. They're headed off to the airfield because.

Nic

Obviously, you know, Utah knows where they're heading, right.

Steve

Utah heard, overheard, they say like Santa Monica Airfield or whatever it was. So they're going there to, to, to get them. And yeah, sure enough, they find them and there is, you know, an Initial sort of argument, but then an actual gun battle ensues here and Papas takes a couple shots. And I think that's it for Angelo Papas. Yeah. We don't get, we don't get any indication that he survives those gunshot. Gunshots to the back.

Nic

No.

Steve

But the final remaining member of Bod's crew also takes a shot but. But is alive enough to keep going, sort of. He gets put into the plane to.

Nic

Get on the plane. Yeah. And Utah actually stops Papas from a clear shot at Bode. It looks like Papas had a shot at killing Bodhi and Utah stopped him from it. And then, you know, now Papas gets killed not by Bodhi, but as a result of not stopping the whole thing.

Steve

And it's lots of conflicting loyalty in this movie. Lots of people who. It's like, wait, which, which, who are you working with? With, who are you with?

Nic

Utah's reaction when Papas got shot. It was a very good no.

Steve

Yeah. Yes, it was, it was a little bit.

Nic

My family enjoyed that when we were.

Steve

Watching a little, a little Ted Theodore Logan at that point. But that's okay.

Nic

You can't fully take the Ted Theodore out of there.

Steve

Yeah. So now Bodhi takes Utah with him. They get on the plane, the plane takes off. The pilot doesn't want to do it, but he's basically get the hell on there and let's go, you know, kind of. So they're headed to Mexico ago, which is apparently where Rosie is holding Tyler and they are going to jump out to go on their way and. And he's going to leave Utah on the plane this way. Utah couldn't, you know, call for backup or get anybody to follow them, whatever. He comes with them. And he's stuck on that plane until the pilot goes to land again. Right is the idea. And so basically Bodhi pushes his, his dying buddy out the plane with the parachute. But he does. I don't think he makes it to the ground. And then he goes out and Utah's got a choice to make. He's got a decision to make. How is he going to solve this problem?

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And my thought, if it were me, of course, he's taken one parachute jump in his entire life. It was that morning. Clearly he is able to. And I would be too. I totally get this. Totally able to maneuver in freefall to line up with and catch someone who has a 15 second head start.

Nic

Yeah. Like he's able to do it if you, if you really tuck your arms into your body or maybe like, like.

Steve

A Superman pose, you know, like it.

Nic

Was an absurd reaction, but I think at that point Utah was like, like it's this or nothing. And did they kill. Had they killed the pilot?

Steve

No, no, no, no, no. The pilot. The pilot just flies off.

Nic

Okay. I thought that for some reason.

Steve

No, I'm pretty sure. Cuz the plane keeps going. So yeah, head back to Santa Monica, like. And the thing is, Utah could have gone back, but he knows he's never going to find Bo. If that happens, they're gone. And potentially never see Tyler again. Who knows how that would go, right? Yeah, but yeah.

Nic

So great, great action though. Like really exciting and just I don't know if the jumping out without a parachute with the plan of catching another guy had been done to this point.

Steve

In movies, I think this was pretty much this was it like. Yeah. Oh no. You know what? I feel like there had to be a moment in Moonraker where James Bond did that. I feel like there was something very similar. He like chases Jaws out the. Out the. But I don't know if maybe they're both wearing shoots, but they. They have to start. There was definitely a bit of parachuting that happens in at least one or two.

Nic

Fighting.

Steve

Yeah, A little bit of air fighting. So. So there's that. But this was a very impressive version of this. And so basically they end up landing. Utah hurts his knee again right in the landing.

Nic

Poor neat dude. I was. It was killing me watching this movie.

Steve

So he lets Bod go. Rosie and Tyler are driving up and, you know, Bod's running off. He get. He and Rosie grab the money that was with. I can't. I can't remember which guy was that died, but whatever. The guy who fell out the plane, it was dead. And Tyler rushes up to Utah and hugs him. And we sort of fade to black for a moment as Rosie and Bodhi are driving off into the Mexican sunset.

Nic

Yeah. And Rosie and Bodhi seem probably more triumphant than they should feel after. It's like, hey, where are the other four guys?

Steve

They got up. They don't have as much money as they thought they'd have. Almost. Their buddies are dead. They can't go back to the States ever. Yeah, all this stuff. And so we get a little, you know, we get a fade crossfade and suddenly it's pouring rain again.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And it is made clear both by the voice on the radio and the side of the car that he's driving on that we're in Australia. Yep. And this hearkens back to one of the first that first party that Utah went to at Bodhi's house where he talks about bodhi does a 50 year storm and how at Bell's beach the waves will be higher next year than they have ever been anywhere on the planet. This is going to be the most incredible, you know, 50 foot waves or whatever. And so that's where Utah goes because famously the Federal Bureau investigation absolutely allowed to operate on foreign soil. That's definitely a thing that happens. It's not at all. I don't know why the hell an FBI agent is in Australia. I can't tell here at this point if Utah is just acting on his own or if he's acting officially. I gotta figure Papas being dead, the bank robbery, not the robbers, not getting caught, all this stuff. Like if he went back to the, to the States, he would have gotten busted, he would be in jail. Utah would be.

Nic

Yeah, I don't, I don't get why they let him stay on the case either. Because even if he was like, well, I really want to do this, my partner got killed, they'd be like, yeah, that's why you're not doing it.

Steve

And he wouldn't physically go to Australia either. They might work with local authorities in Australia, but like he's not allowed to just go. So he go. But he goes, he goes to Bell's beach. Sure enough, who's standing out there on the beach? His boat. Utah, you know, sort of very, you know, poetically drops his Reagan mask at his feet. I'm not sure where he got that from. I guess it was. Did he take it off of the bank? Maybe it was, you know, an evidence locker somewhere. But there it is.

Nic

There's a spirit store in Australia, but all the masks are like John Curtin. It's like, wait, this is not. I need an Australian Prime Minister.

Steve

Yeah. So they start fighting in the surf, in the water. And this gave me another sort of like flashback moment to, to Swayze in the river in Roadhouse, ripping. Like there was a lot like in the shallow water fighting. And it felt very much like that. But yeah, so.

Nic

And they come up, so they're struggling and scuffling for a while and then all of a sudden you hear that great click sound of the handcuff. And Bodhi looks. And Utah's handcuffed him to himself. And we got a good. No, no, no. Bodhi very upset by this. And it just kind of showed that, that I don't know if he ever believed that he could be caught or foiled in this. It's almost like he felt like he was on some kind of divinely inspired mission because he talked a lot throughout the movie about just people waking up and humanity and the soul, like people without any soul and all this stuff. Like there's part of him, I think, that believe that he was really some kind of like healing type figure or something like that. So very, very, very upset there. And then he's able to talk with Utah a little bit and it's amazing to me.

Steve

So, yeah, so he talks to you. Tony's basically like, you know, don't do this to me. Let me go out and surf that wave. This is the only chance my entire life has been building to this. Which I'm, you know, in my mind, if Utah was any good at being an FBI agent, and I posit that he is indeed the worst FBI agent who's ever existed in modern pop culture whatsoever, if he was any good at be, at doing his job, he would have been like, yeah, too bad. Bank robbing murderer. Like, you're coming to jail. Like. So the Australian authorities are now pouring down onto the beach. They're coming to, to come, you know, get Bodhi or whatever. And because again, they're taking orders from Special Agent Johnny Utah for some reason. But, you know, basically, yeah, Utah like takes off the handcuffs and lets Bodhi go out into the water to surf these incredible 50 foot waves, knowing that it is a death wish, that this is how Bodhi's gonna die. Because the Australians like, oh, you let him go. We'll get him when he comes back, mate. And it's like he's not coming back.

Nic

And then not like one of your boomerangs.

Steve

Right. But it's. But then he throws his badge away. So he's done being an FBI. He literally was an FBI agent for like six months. Yeah, I don't, I don't get it.

Nic

Yeah, I know. It's big waste of a law school scholarship.

Steve

There's that, that football scholarship to law school boy. But this is what I kind of like. To me, the movie is really fun and very fantastic up to this scene in Australia. All this sort of epilogue that occurs in the rain in Australia to me is like. I almost would have preferred if this movie ended with Rosie and Bodhi just getting away.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And just end the movie there. Utah's got, got Tyler again in my head canon at that point. He never would have left Mexico. He would have just repaid. He just would have like, let's start a lifetime here. Because if I go back to la, they're gonna arrest me, right, for all the fuck ups I did and all the people who died and shit. So, so, but no, we had to do this like epilogue where he clearly still has enough sway with the bureau and enough sort of authority to, you know, muster these Australian law enforcement officers to come capture this guy, then deliberately let him out of custody so that they can't capture him and then throw his FBI badge into the ocean. Okay.

Nic

Yeah, I think he, he had a lot invested in his career that he just kind of of allowed to slip through, but I don't know, maybe.

Steve

Very strange.

Nic

Yeah, but I do, I, you know, I didn't think of it that way. I was just kind of like, okay, well you got to end this somehow. And there's not a sequel. So. Yeah, he's not a, he's not an FBI agent anymore. And that, that's kind of it. Which is good that again, we don't need him and Tyler getting married. We don't need some kind of dumb post action sequence. And it just ends with like, like, you know what? I don't need this anymore. Like I'm done. Like my work is done here. But then, I don't know, what's he going to do?

Steve

He's going to surf and make meatball sandwiches.

Nic

What are you going to do as a famous former college athlete with a law degree? I mean, there's no career choice.

Steve

No, no, no options there. Go back and live with mom and dad in Columbus.

Nic

Good ending. And I like Bod's line. He's like, what am I going to do? I'm not going to paddle out to New Zealand.

Steve

Right. It's like, you might try.

Nic

But Utah, you know, he has this level of respect for Bodhi throughout the movie. And I think even though for all of Bodhi's actions, he deserves, you know, the worst of punishment because of all the death and destruction he's caused. There's something about his, I don't know, his soul or whatever, for lack of a better term, that Utah respects and feels like should be respected a little bit.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And just, or maybe Utah just, he got the surfing bug and he realizes that, that for a surfer, for a lifelong surfer, that is the way to go out.

Steve

I guess that's true. Surfing's the source, man. It'll change your life, that kid. All right, well.

Nic

What a movie.

Steve

Yeah, it really, it really is an impressive movie. Let, let, let's let's put our, our final thoughts down on wax here. Nic, why don't you kind of, you know, wrap it up for me. What, how do you rate this movie? What are your final thoughts about it?

Nic

So it had probably been maybe 10 years since I've seen it, but I've seen it a bunch before and boy, it holds up. It looks beautiful. Like we, like we talked about it doesn't look that 90s, right. You know, 1991, but it looks good. The way we were talking about the Fugitive is that none of the movie really puts you in that era other than that's what, that's when it was filmed.

Steve

Right. That's how people were dressing and stuff like that.

Nic

But yeah, but it doesn't feel old or dated. Everything feels current in it. The performances are great, the character actors are great. So many quotes from this movie that you really get a chuckle out of. So there's the action, but there's a lot of laughs during this movie. And yeah, Keanu Reeves can do it and his career has borne out that he is, he was the right guy for this. And even though it's goofy and people make fun of the way he talks and things like that, he is an action star and he's a great action star and was and is. And yeah, I love this movie. Kathryn Bigelow directing. This was her first feature film.

Steve

I'm not sure if it was her first. It was definitely early on. It wasn't her first, but it was early in her career which then went on. She made many, many more wonderful movies.

Nic

Right, right. So I love this movie and I would rate this movie a four and a half out of five. I really. It holds up and there's not a lot to, to pick on with this. Honestly, the watching experience is very enjoyable and like I said, my wife and my 13 year old did not plan on hanging in to watch this movie with me. And we put on the first 10 minutes and they were hooked and they loved it. It. And there's a couple parts that weren't great for a 13 year old. But you know, I was able to kind of like fast forward or look over there. Exactly. You know, there's always that, oh, I.

Steve

Think we have ice cream. Yeah.

Nic

But yeah, I very impressed. Really, really loved it.

Steve

How about you? So I definitely, definitely, really like this movie. I think I held a higher place in my memory of it than, than I have now a little bit. I think that, you know, I hadn't seen it. It. I, like I said at the beginning, I think I've seen the first half or the first hour a dozen times and this, you know, in the rest of the movie you know, maybe two or three. Like, it's just the way things worked out, the manner in which I would tend to watch this movie or see it on the background somewhere. And I think that, you know, the ending did kind of mess it up for me. I gotta be honest. Like, I didn't love the way it ended. I don't really understand Utah's motivations at the end. And maybe that's just on me. But it wasn't, you know, really clear to me. Whatever that having been said, it's still a ton of fun. It's incredibly fun movie. Like you said, performances are all fantastic. I think this is actually one of Patrick Swayze's best acted roles. I really think that he does a fantastic job in this and I do really like it. But for me, it's more about a three and a half. That's where I'm at on it. Which I think is. Is, you know, that's about where I'm comfortable. Very good movie. Obviously, it's Point Break. It's not like we really need to recommend Point Break to people. They know the movie.

Nic

Word is on the street is out about Point Break.

Steve

That's right, people do know about it. They even remade it in 2015. Seen. And I haven't seen that one.

Nic

Never happens.

Steve

Exactly. So, yeah. So three and a half and a four and a half. That gives an eight out of 10 for us, I think is perfectly reasonable. Very good score for this movie. And yeah, that's that. So this was your pick and so I think the next one is mine.

Nic

What do we have coming up?

Steve

Steve, this is a lot of fun. So I have a belief in me, in my core part of my being that 1984 was one of the best years for movies. Movies. And in fact, I've got a quick list. I'll tell you. The following films came out just between Memorial Day and Labor Day of 1984. Okay. Indiana Jones and the Temple of doom, Star Trek 3, the search for Spock, Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Top Secret, the Karate Kid, Conan the Destroyer, the Muppets Take Manhattan, the Neverending Story, Revenge of the Nerds, Purple Rain, Cloak and Dagger, Red dawn, and the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai all came came out between Memorial Day and Labor Day of 1984. And the same day the Muppets Take Manhattan came out, this movie came out. So you and I, Nic, we're going to join Trailer Park Living Alex Rogan as he is recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Zur and the Codan Armada. When we watch the Last Starfighter, the la.

Nic

I've never seen this one.

Steve

This was a. I've heard about.

Nic

I've never seen. I'm very excited.

Steve

Excited. This movie again came out 84. We were like 4 years old. I think I probably saw. I didn't see the theater. I would have seen the first time. We were five or six. But I was a huge Star wars kid. Big, big time. There just wasn't a lot of Star wars stuff out back then. I mean, you know, you watch Return of the Jedi, you watch Empire Strikes Back, like, whatever. But this movie scratched the. The Star wars itch in a lot of ways. And it was a movie I probably watched, you know, 20, 30, 40 times, just in elementary school. Like, it was a regular viewing for me. So very excited to share it with you. You know, we'll see how it holds up. We'll see what the perspective of somebody watching it in 2025 for the first time. It's going to be different than all the memories and nostalgia I have for it. But that's kind of. That's the beauty of the show is, is, you know, does the. No. Is the nostalgia enough?

Nic

Right, right, right.

Steve

Is the movie stand on its own or do maybe that's Movie Center. Do you need the nostalgia? So next week we will watch the Last Star Fighter, and I'm excited.

Nic

All right.

Steve

Okay. Well, this has been Point Break, and this has been at 2 dads, 1 movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

Thank you guys all so much for listening. Take care.

Nic

Thanks, everyone.