POINT BREAK Little hand says its time to rock and roll.
  • POINT BREAK Little hand says it's time to rock and roll.

Gerard Butler has dropped out of the Point Break remake, ostensibly because its shooting schedule conflicts with that of his White House Down sequel, but hopefully because he realized remaking Point Break is a futile and offensive task that should never be attempted by anyone ever.

It is being attempted though, with or without Butler. Which means that the role of Bodhi—so memorably played in Kathryn Bigelow's classic by the inimitable Patrick Swayze—is now unclaimed. And as far as I (the world's foremost authority on Point Break) am concerned? That means that there's only one person who can be cast to play this new iteration of Bodhi—the dangerous, bank-robbing surfer whose Buddhist nihilism inspires, teaches, and frightens the driven, impressionable young FBI agent Johnny Utah.

That one person? The person who absolutely must play Bodhi in the Point Break remake?

Keanu Reeves.

As Johnny Utah in the 1991 original, Reeves delivered one of his best performances. (Obnoxious people like to rag on Reeves, because his surfer-dude accent is apparently irresistible to the same sort of halfwits who used to imitate Austin Powers, but dude can be legitimately good when he's cast well, which he was in Point Break.) Remember, if you will, Point Break's powerful, rain-soaked, Australia-set conclusion, in which Bodhi went to surf that great tube in the sky and Johnny flung his now-worthless FBI badge into the ocean. In that moment, the raw, adrenalin-fueled conflict at the heart of the film was turned on its head: Johnny, once the student, became the master.

What better way to continue that sentiment than by casting Reeves as Bodhi—thus making Johnny, from a certain point of view, the true spiritual successor to Bodhi? And thus giving this cynical Point Break rehash some much-needed heart? Reeves could pull the role off like crazy (though not as well as Swayze did, because no one will ever be able to do Bodhi as well as Swayze did), and it'd be a hell of a callback and tribute to the original. And viewers who were too young to have seen—and to have been profoundly influenced by—the original Point Break? They won't know the difference. They'll just know that Bodhi is someone awesome. That Bodhi is someone dangerous. That Bodhi is someone wise. That Bodhi... is Bodhi.

The more I think about this idea, the better I think it is. I demand that this happen.

ABSOLUTELY NO ONE ELSE BESIDES KEANU REEVES CAN BE CAST AS BODHI IN THE POINT BREAK REMAKE.

(Unless it's Gary Busey.)